Columbia ^niDcr^ftp 

THE LIBRARIES 





0. p. F ITZGER ALD. 



SUNSET VIEWS 



IN THREE PARTS. 



BY 

BISHOP O. P. FITZGERALD. 



'/ am a ;^crt ^f fill t%aT 1 lihxfe w.?^. '*— TenNYSON 






Nashville, Tenn. ; Dallas, Tex. : 

PfBLisHiNfj House of the M. E. Church, South. 

Smith & Lamar, Agents. 

1906. 






^4^. ^~^ 



^ n -: 



3 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1900, 

By the Book Agents of the M. E. Church, South, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at W^ashington. 



• • 4 • • 



TO BE READ OR SKIPPED. 

In most of the thin<^s that they do, men act from 
mixed motives. Whether the making of this book 
shall prove an exception to this general rule, the reader 
will judge. Of this I am sure : The chief motive is to 
magnify the mercy of God. And the thought that these 
pages mav make a channel for his grace to flow into oth- 
er souls warms my heart as I pen these words. 

Several kindly voices had said to me : " Tell the 
story of the men and times you have seen, in your own 
way." The thought took hold of my mind, and almost 
grew into a purpose. I have not the vanity or the 
idiocy to think that my life is worth writing. I would 
not do it if I could. No man who tells the story of 
his own life ever tells all. There are reserves of self- 
respect and privacy that arc sacred to all save the hope- 
lessly vulgar and vile. I have no grudges to settle. 
I do not wish to leave a line written by this hand that 
will give pain to any human heart. Posthumous mal- 
ice is the meanest of all : it combines both malignity 
and cowardice. The Christian statute of limitations 
applies to all grudges in noble souls, when time has 
come to cool the heat of passion or to clarify the judg- 
ment. Death cancels all debts of reprisal. 

A week ago I decided, if so God willed, that I would 
print these chapters in their present form. This final 
decision was made just as the setting sun flushed with 
glory the hills that encircle Nashville, the beloved city 
whose people are like kinsfolk to me, from whose homes 
so many elect souls dear to me have already gone up to 
the city that hath foundations whose maker and builder 
is God. 



CONFIDENTIAL. 

This book is now submitted to my friends in the 
shape of its original plan. The sermons and the lec- 
tures are omitted. Men and things take their place. 
Thus the book is made a homogeneous work. If it 
shall thereby be made more acceptable to the readers. 
I shall be grateful. My literary constituency has al- 
ways been generous in its treatment of me as a book- 
maker. If this, my last endeavor on that line, may 
give them any measure of pleasure and profit, I shall 
be glad and thankful. O. P. Fitzgerald. 

Nashville, Tenn. 

(iv) 



SUB-PREFACE. 

To burn or to print these pages — that was the ({ucs- 
tion with me when, thinking the time of my departure 
was at hand, I was setting- my affairs in order. IMuch 
stuff, such as it was, was consumed, but these pages 
were spared for reasons that may be guessed at by the 
discerning. My old friends will be indulgent. If any 
of them shall conclude that I have ventured once too 
often as a bookmaker, so be it. I have not been the 
first, nor will I be the last, to err in this way. 

The Author. 



FOREWORD. 

That vision of the sunsetting came to me in a dream 
of the night. It ^vas a vision that excelled all that 
mine eye had seen in all my waking hours. I stood 
on the top of a peak, high and lifted up above ten 
thousand lesser ones grouped belovs^ and all around it, 
all bright with the glory of a cloudless sunset. The 
silence was holy. The note of a song bird, the chirp 
of an insect, or the flutter of a butterfly's wing would 
have jarred on my ear then and there. I had sunk to 
sleep after a day of weakness and pain — thinking, 
thinking, thinking, and praying : thinking that I might 
next awake in the spirit-world or linger on here only 
to suffer, and praying that grace might be given me 
to go or to wait, as it pleased God. The vision came 
when it was needed by the soul that clung to God and 
was sweetly tuned by him for its touch. I awoke 
with a blessedness in my spirit that cannot be put into 
words. A still, small voice whispered to my inner ear : 
"At evening time it shall be light." And it is. 

The title of this book was born of that vision. The 
blessing of it abides. O. P. F. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

To Be Read or Skipped iii 

Confidential iv 

Sub-preface v 

Foreword vi 

Blood Will Tell, but Not All 3 

An Early Start 9 

My First Schooling „ . 15 

A Sad Xicrht Ride 21 

How Methodism Kept Its Hold 27 

Taking Shape 33 

Formative Influences 39 

Four Old-time Revivalists 47 

A Unique Pedagogical Experience 55 

In Richmond in the Forties 6i 

Afloat 69 

A Turning Point 77 

Initiated S3 

My Environment 89 

My First Sermon 97 

Preaching to the Blacks 103 

Sent to Savannah 107 

Savannah 113 

To California 119 

On the Pacific Side 127 

California as We Found It 135 

Those Early Californians 141 

Some Preachers 149 

Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism 159 

The Old Panel 169 

A Midwinter Meditation 179 

(vii) 



viii Contents. 

PAGE 

A Little Note iSo 

My Impulsive Friend 1S3 

Some Types of Methodist Women 191 

Our Jewish Friends 199 

Sunset Views at Seabreeze 205 

The Novel-reading Pest 211 

A Wore Excellent Way , 217 

Money-makers , 223 

Tom Reed 229 

Our New Year Motto 233 

The Future Safe ........ 239 

Birthday Reflections 243 

Mark rianna Astonished 247 

Our Irish Friends 253 

Transfigured Singers 259 

An Abiding Benediction 269 

William McKendree 273 

McTyeire as an Editor . 281 

The Question We Are All Asking: Why Do 

They Not Come Back ? 291 

The Son of Man 301 

Our Three Pillows 305 

Big Ab : A Typical Old-time Negro 309 

Another Question All Are Asking : When and 

W^hy Did Miracles Cease ? 315 

Led by the Spirit 323 

John M. Daniel and Some of His Contemporaries 331 

Sunset Views from My Bedroom Window 339 

A Fresh Interpretation 347 

The Master's Message 351 

Heredity 355 

"The Goal" 359 



BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL. 
1 



BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL 

BLOOD will tell. From Adam and Eve 
down to this day, this has been an ac- 
cepted truism. From Abraham to the 
latest born inheritors of titles or dollars, 
men have loved to air or invent their 
pedigrees. Our family w^as like other families in 
this respect. The lower the family fortunes sunk 
— and they sank to a point that was very low at 
one time — the more they had to say as to what 
they had been in earlier days. Perspective smoothes 
genealogies as well as landscapes. Distance lends 
enchantment to the view where the imagination 
gilds the summits of vision. It is well that this is 
so. There is enough that is petty and pitiful in 
our everyday life to give us cause for thankfulness 
for the glamour that is on the past, as well as for the 
glory that through faith and hope gild the future. 

My parents — Richard Fitzgerald and Martha 
Hooper — were both Virginians, and belonged, at 
least in a chronological sense, to the first families. 
I could wish that I knew the verity of the tradition 
that this Virginia branch of the Fitzgeralds was 
akin to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was a martyr 
for the cause of freedom for Ireland. There is no 
nobler name in Irish history. This is saying much. 
The noblest Irishmen are among the noblest of 
earth's true nobility, whether titled or untitled. A 
mean Irishman is the meanest of men. Irishmen 
are extremists, patriots of the first quality or trai- 
tors of blackest dye ; mart^^rs glad to die for truth 
or readv to sell it to the highest bidder. God bless 

(3) 



4 • Sunset Viczi/s. 

old Ireland I God bless her children wherever 
they may wander to the latest generation ! 

The families of the Hoopers, the Powells, the 
Goodes, the Grants, the Irbys were branches of the 
family tree. My maternal grandmother w^as a mar- 
vel of energy in business and fervor in religion. 
She had every soul on the plantation aroused at 
daybreak and ready for work. Her gift in prayer 
w^as mighty. At a camp meeting her prayers 
seemed to move heaven and earth. She ran a dis- 
tillery famous for the quality of its whisky. There 
is no question of her sincerity as a Christian. At 
that time members of the various branches of the 
Church of Christ took their drams as a matter of 
course, ran distilleries, and ''treated" in election 
campaigns. The stillhouse and "meetinghouse" 
were owned and managed by the same persons as 
a matter of course. The Methodists were among 
the first to make w^ar against w^hisky in that region, 
as elsew^here in this land. The fires of that old 
stillhouse have long since ceased to burn, the very 
site of it is lost; but the songs of the Methodists 
are still heard among those Dan River hills. The 
dear old mother in Israel now sees more clearl}^ 
w^hat few could* see in her day — the sin and curse 
of strong drink — and w^hen we join in the new 
song in heaven, she will be there too. The ideas 
and standards have changed, and changed for the 
better, during the intervening decades. God is 
God, and this world is his world. 

An illustration of the reign of God's grace in the 
world may come in just here. Among the negroes 
on the farm was " Uncle Lunnon," who in an earlier 
and darker time came over from Africa as a compul- 
sory immigrant in a British slave ship. He was al- 
most as strong as a gorilla, and very profane and 
hot-tempered. But he was honest and truthful. 



Blood Will Tclh hut Not AIL 5 

He lived to be one hundred and twenty years old — 
the oldest man of any color that I ever saw. The 
most remarkable fact concerning Uncle Lunnon 
was his conversion in the last year of his life. 
By the grace of God he was brought under deep 
conviction by this thought which came into his 
mind: " I have been faithful to my earthly mars- 
ter, but Tve been a mean nigger toward my heav- 
enly Marster. I've lived longer than any nigger I 
ever heard of; in my prime I was stronger than 
any man, black or white, I ever met. But Tve 
been a cussin' and not a prayin' man all my life. 
I am a mean nigger." So, to use his own lan- 
guage, Uncle Lunnon put the case to himself. In 
genuine penitence he bowed before God, and 
helped by the counsel and prayers of my uncle, 
Bannister Fitzgerald, Uncle Lunnon was led to 
lay hold of the hope set before sinners in the gos- 
pel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit itself 
maketh intercession for us. If any channel is 
left open in a human soul, the grace of God will 
flow in. 

Heredity is a potent factor in every human life. 
Free agency is also a fact. Heredity may give a 
trend upward or downward, but free agency de- 
termines the movement. Not fatalit}^ but free 
agency, fixes destiny. The rule of judgment is 
equitable. Thje Judge is infallible. Where little 
is given, little is required; and where much is 
given, much is required. Lack of effort is the 
only ground of condemnation of any human soul. 
The slothful servant, not the one less gifted, is the 
one who went into outer darkness — not only by the 
sentence of the Judge, but by the drift of his own 
indolence, or by the perversity of his own will. 
No soul ever perished in any other way. 



AN EARLY START. 



AN EARLY START. 

WHEN two days old, I came into the 
Church of Christ in a sense good and 
true, and have been in it in some 
sense until now. Membership with 
me means membership forever. The 
Church militant mer^res into the Church trium- 

o 

phant. The Church is the one organization on 
earth in which membership never lapses. The 
reader understands my meaning when I say that I 
came into the Church when tw^o days old — that is 
to say, I was then dedicated to God in baptism. 
Dr. Abram Penn, of the Virginia Conference, was 
the administrator. The second member of my 
"given" or Christian name is Penn, and was 
given for that man of God, whose memory is 
blessed. After pouring or sprinkling upon m}' 
head the crystal drops that symbolize the promised 
grace that cleanses the soul through the atoning 
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he knelt at the 
bedside and prayed that the man-child might live 
before the Lord ; that he might be a disciple of 
Jesus; that he might be a Methodist preacher. " I 
felt the answer,"' said my mother to me with wet 
eyes in a low voice that I seem to hear now as I 
write the words. She felt the answer — and so 
have I all my life. Christians used to talk that 
way in those days concerning prayer. They be- 
lieved that the prayer of faith touches God, and that 
God can and does touch the petitioner and the sub- 
ject of the prayer at the same moment. The old 
Book seems to put it the same way. Many Christians 
reach this level at times in their lives. It is a high 

(9) 



lO Sunset Viczvs. 

plane : up there the air is very pure and the hght 
is clear-shining. My mother had that sort of faith. 
According to her faith it was done unto her: she 
lived to know that the boy-child she gave to God 
in the baptismal covenant was a minister of the 
gospel of Jesus Christ. My dear, Christian mother 1 
She was said to be wonderfully beautiful in her 
youth. To me she was always beautiful. She 
was a woman of many sorrows. The last time 
I saw her the marks of age and pain and grief 
were on her face. I shall see her again, clothed in 
beauty greater than that of her bridal morning, up 
3'onder in that land where the w^eary rest. She 
was a sweet singer, and her songs were mostly in 
the minor key. She had sorrows of her own, and 
was touched by all the sorrow of the circles in 
which she moved, from the highest to the lowest. 
She ministered to all, and was loved by all. These 
many years she has been within the vail. I shall 
know her when w^e meet, and the rest of the city 
of God w^ili be completer when once more I feel 
the clasp of her arms. 

Yes, I came into the Church when two days 
old, and the tie was never wholly broken. The 
relation of the baptized children of the Church 
to the Church and its Head is very sacred to 
ev.ery parent who knows and feels what is meant 
by the baptism of children. Many show that 
they neither know nor feel its solemn and bless- 
ed significance. There wall be an awakening 
and a reform in the brighter day that is com- 
ing in Christendom. Then will be understood 
the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the 
Master's w^ords : "Suffer the little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is 
the kingdom of heaven." What do the words 
mean ? We may be sure that they do not mean 



A?/ Early Start. ii 

that our children are farther from God and lower 
in privilege in the New Testament Church than 
under the old dispensation. We maybe sure that 
they do not mean that our children must of neces- 
sity go into sin and be stained and maimed and 
stunted in their spiritual development by it. We 
may be sure that they do not mean that they are 
to be turned loose in the world and branded by 
the devil, afterwards to be lassoed and tamed if 
possible by special effort. No, no ! The Master's 
words must mean at least this much: that the 
baptized children of the Church belong to him; 
they are initially inducted into his kingdom ; they 
have the promise of prevenient grace and guidance 
up to the line of moral accountability. Then 
what? Just this: they may and ought to tide right 
over by faith into the conscious salvation of the 
gospel. Faith is choice — the choice of the parent 
at first, the choice of the child when choice for it 
is possible. My mother felt the answer to her 
prayer of faith at my baptism: I feel it now. 

The millennium cannot come until the Church 
shall have assumed its proper relation to the chil- 
dren of the Church. If it were to come, it could 
not stay with a Church that allows a wall of ice to 
shut ofi her children from her communion. Ques- 
tion: May not the lapse into sin of so many chil- 
dren in the families of ministers of the gospel and 
other good people be owing to their error at this 
point .-" The religious natures of their children 
bud into initial life normally at an early age, and 
are killed by the frosts of neglect and delay. They 
may not have a second budding time: if they do, 
will not the growth be a stunted growth? The 
promise is to 3'ou and 3'our children in the present 
tense for all. Let him and her that readeth un- 
derstand. 



MY FIRST SCHOOLING, 



MY FIRST SCHOOLING. 

THE image of my tirst school-teacher rises 
before me as I begin this chapter — that of 
a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced, holy woman, 
wlio opened the daily sessions with a 
prayer that made us feel that she was 
talking with God and that he was there. The dis- 
cipline of her school was strict, but it was the 
strictness of a constraining and pervading personal 
influence rather than a code of rules or fear of 
punishment. A boy about my own age one day 
was detected in a falsehood, and was told to stand 
in a corner and think of his sin against God. All 
the corporal punishment I ever felt or witnessed 
in all my life never impressed me with the guilt and 
shame of falsehood as did that object lesson. She 
somehow^ made us feel that all sin \vas sacrilegious 
as well as mean. We all loved her. The image 
of Rebecca Field — that was her name — keeps its 
place in my heart undimmed. She was what 
coarse people call an old maid — one of those 
sweet-souled and finely-tuned women who, mak- 
ing no homes of their own, bless every home they 
touch ; one of those Christlike spirits that, with a 
self-abnegation incomprehensible to lower natures, 
live for others, sweetening this dull, sordid world 
and ripening for that other world beyond \vhere, 
with that other Mary whom Jesus loved and a blessed 
company of such elect souls, they will find their re- 
ward and fit companionship. That long sentence 
grew upon me, but its length w^ill be excused when 
the reader is told that this holy woman, my first 
teacher, gave me a love for all such that I can 
never lose. 

('5) 



i6 Sunset Viezvs. 

Mv next teacher was a man — a man to be re» 
membered. He was a good man, but severe, with 
notions of school government and discipline quite 
in contrast with those held by my first teacher. 
He did not spoil his pupils by sparing the rod. He 
whipped them with apparent enjoyment and ex- 
traordinar}' energy and frequency. Those gum 
and hickory switches, four or five in number, 
were placed above his desk, not for ornament, but 
for use. I heard him say more than once that I 
was his favorite scholar: he exhibited his favorit- 
ism by whipping me more than the others. Under 
the circumstances I was not very proud of the 
distinction. Fear and force ruled his school. 
The boys hated and feared him, and loved to an- 
noy him as much as he seemed to enjoy flogging 
them. It was a hard time for both teacher and 
pupils. Once during the term we "turned him 
out " for a holiday, and it was done by main force : 
a big boy asked for a holiday, and was refused; 
and then the irate pedagogue was thrown to the 
floor and held down until he agreed to the demand. 
We went away triumphant and rejoicing. But 
when we came back after the holiday was over, 
he "got even" wdth us, and more. Those gum 
and hickory switches made up for lost time. It is 
needless to say that to me the memory of the teach- 
er that prayed and ruled by love is sweeter than that 
of the one who whipped and ruled by fear. 

My third teacher was a quaint old Irish-Ameri- 
can, a fine scholar, a gentleman of the old school, 
whose passion was mathematics and whose special 
abhorrence was fault}^ syntax. He was not averse 
to the use of the rod in dealing with boys, but he 
never gave a blow to a girl: the chivalry of his 
race on its upper side was in his blood and breed- 
ing. An Irishman's best, let me again say, is as 



M\ First Schooliuo-. jtj 

good as the best to be found an3'where on earth, 
lie would show a partiahty toward the girls that 
made the boys angry sometimes. At this distance 
this trait lends a grace to his memory. His weak- 
ness leaned in the direction of a chivalrous senti- 
ment that has made half of the poetry of the 
world and a large part of its blessedness. It is a 
pleasant fact to record that my old Irish-American 
schoolmaster became a Christian man. He was 
converted at a Methodist camp meeting, and was 
quaintly demonstrative on the occasion. On the 
camp ground he had an enemy, a man named 
Kemp. Glowing with his hrst love as a Christian 
he sought his enemy, and finding him in the midst 
of a group of men, he grasped his hand, saying 
impulsively: ''Kemp, give me your hand — I feel 
humble enough to shake hands with a dog ! " The 
old man kept the faith unto the end of his life. 

My next and last teacher ,was a small man, 
quick of motion and speech, with a big head cov- 
ered with black bushy hair, spotless in his apparel, 
jealous of his dignity, with a passion for work and 
genuine good will toward all his pupils. He was 
what many would call a fussy man, ready to take 
sides in all personal quarrels, a hot partisan in 
politics, and perpetually entangled in mild love 
scrapes. But he had the pedagogical gift beyond 
question, and was at bottom a true man. There 
was a streak of romance in his life, but the pathos 
of grief and death crowd it out of this record. 

I had other schoolincf all alono- of course — the 
schooling of my environment, which was mixed 
and peculiar. Our home was a frequent stopping 
place for the Methodist preachers. When farthest 
from religion in his daily life, my father never lost 
his respect and regard for the Methodist Church 
and its ministry. Her Church life was for my 



1 8 Sunset Viezvs. 

mother the golden thread that ran through all the 
tangled web of her life. So in my boyhood I 
heard (as a boy hears) the sermons of such pulpit 
giants as Peter Doub, James Reid, and William 
Anderson ; the tremendous exhortations of Father 
Dye; the seraphic songs of Jehu Hank. I was 
saturated with the spirit of that time of mighty revi- 
vals, polemical controversy, and sharp hand-to-hand 
fighting with the world, the flesh, and the devil. And 
the fighting w^as indeed sharp. The whisky distill- 
ery, the cross-road doggery, the cockfight, the horse 
race, the card table, were all around. I saw and 
heard much that I would be glad to forget forever. 
It was larcrely a duel between the Methodist Church 
and the whisky devil during this period. When 
in 1866 my father, then an old man, told me that 
he went alone once every day to pray in the little 
Methodist chapel in sight of his home, and that 
he had found peace with God, and w^as w^aiting for 
the call to go up to meet my mother, I thanked 
God for the Methodist Church that has made the 
desert places of America blossom and its wilder- 
nesses to rejoice. 

The life and death of my brother William, two 
3'ears older than myself, was a graciously educative 
influence of my boyhood. He was frail in his 
physical constitution from the start, and there was 
something about him that seemed to indicate that 
he was destined for another and higher sphere than 
earth. He was never known to utter an evil w^ord, 
or to show a wrong temper, or to strike an angry 
blow. There was a spiritual beauty about him that 
awed and attracted both the old and the 3^oung. He 
died in his teens, lying in our mother's arms, his 
face shining rapturously as he said with upward 
look, ' ' Lift me higher ! ' ' That death and the life 
that went before it were part of my schooling. 



A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 



A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 

1WAS a sad-hearted boy that winter day when 
I left home to go out into the wide world alone. 
jMy mother's hot tears fell on my face as she 
gave me a parting kiss. I feel it all as I write 
these lines to-day, more than fifty years after- 
wards. I w^as under fourteen years old. The 
family fortunes had sunk to a point where it be- 
came imperative that I should become self-support- 
ing. From that day to this I have fought this bat- 
tle. The record of the struggle would be a record 
of my gropings in the dark and sinnings in the 
light on the one side, and of the patience and 
mercy of my God on the other. (That last sen- 
tence might be taken as an epitome of my whole 
life.) Blessed be His name! 

My destination was Lynchburg, Virginia. It 
was twelve miles to Danville, where ended the first 
stage of my journey. I felt like one in a dream 
as the four-horse stage w^heeled me along. The 
winter sk}" looked cold, and there was a heaviness 
about my heart and a lump in my throat. I had 
no appetite for the hot supper set before me at 
Williams's Tavern. When a boy in his early teens 
loses his appetite, there is something serious in the 
case. At two o'clock in the morning I was roused 
and told that the stagecoach was waiting for me. 
That ride ! It seemed a long, long time from two 
o'clock to daybreak. The weather was very cold, 
the very stars glittering coldly in the sky, the 
horses' hoofs making lively time on the frozen 
roadbed. The jolting of the stagecoach and the 
sadness of my heart kept me wdde awake dur- 

(21) 



22 SiDisct Views. 

ing the long hours. The sense of loneliness was 
then tirst felt, not for the last time. There are 
souls that feel it all their lives — orphaned at the 
the start, isolated all along. To such heaven will 
be sweeter, if possible, than to all others — the 
heaven where the family of God shall meet and 
mingle in fellowship unrestrained, with love un- 
mixed and unending. Blessed are the homesick 
who shall reach that home ! I was too heartsick 
to realize how cold it was. When at sunrise 
we drove up to the tavern at Pittsylvania Court- 
house, I was so nearly frozen that I had to 
be lifted out of the stagecoach, taken into the 
house, and set by the big log fire to thaw. The 
landlady gave me a kindly look, and spoke kindly 
words that touched my boy-heart. But I thought of 
the home I had left on the other side of Dan River, 
and again there was a lump in my throat. It all 
comes back — that long cold night ride, the all-day 
'ride that followed, and the heartache that never 
left me for a moment. Over the hills of Pittsyl- 
vania and Campbell counties, crossing Staunton 
River, which then looked big to my boyish eyes, 
the wintry wind whistling through the forest trees, 
the smoke curling upward from mansions or cabins 
in the clearings, the Blue Ridge outlined north- 
ward in the sky that looked so far away and so 
cold — it all comes back with a rush upon m}^ memo- 
ry, my first day alone in the world. There was a 
sort of semi-orphanage in my consciousness that 
day that has given me sympathy for orphanage all 
my life. And I do not wonder that the Book that 
tells us what is in God's heart toward his creatures 
says so much about the children that are mother- 
less and homeless. The heavenly Father may not 
be seen by the natural eye in the order of the nat- 
ural world, but the throb of his heart is felt in the 



A Sad Nig-ht Ride. 23 

Word that tells us what he is and how he feels. 
The heavenly Father ! — that is what he calls him- 
self. Our Fatlier, who art in heaven, thy king- 
dom come in our hearts, in our lives, in our world, 
is the prayer that rises from my soul in penning 
the closing words of this short chapter I Ainoi, 



HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 



HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 

IT may be worth while for me to pause in this 
stra<^gHng narration, and tell how it was that 
Methodism held its grasp upon me. The so- 
lution seems to be very simple: Methodism 
went everywhere that I went. There was al- 
ways within my hearing a Methodist voice that 
would expose the sophistries of infidelity, and I 
was never beyond the sweep of a revival w^ave that 
bore me back tow^ard my mother's Church. No 
matter how high might rise the tides of worldli- 
ness, passion, or unbelief, the tides of spiritual life 
in Methodism rose higher still. The Methodist 
idea then seemed to be that the mission of the 
Church was to save sinners in a sense more ex- 
plicit than is now understood by many. The great 
revival out of which Methodism was born was still 
sweeping over the land. Through Methodism and 
other evangelical agencies God was commanding 
all men everywhere to repent. The kingdom of 
heaven was at hand in a sense that was. special. 
To save sinners, not to build up the Church, was 
the Methodistic idea. The continent shook be- 
neath its tread. This is the gospel that was 
needed. The Church was built up, of course, 
wherever souls were born of God into new life 
under her ministry. There never was seen an}^- 
where else such rapid growth in Church member- 
ship as there was in Methodism in the flush time 
of its revival power. Mas a change come over it? 
Is a change desirable? Is a change to be ex- 
pected? No! Let us have no radical change in 
our convictions as to what are the true functions 

(-^7) 



28 Sunset Views. 

of the Christian Church. Let us have no radical 
change of opinion or practice as to what is the 
special mission of Methodism. Methodism is not 
a sacerdotalism. When it becomes thus mummi- 
fied, it will be ready for its shroud of formalism 
and for burial. It is Christianity in earnest — in the 
present tense. (Dr. Chalmers would not object to 
the added clause, even if it does seem tautologous. ) 
Methodists when saved become soul-savers in 
some form of Christian service. All are to be at 
it, and always at it, as long as they live on earth. 
To build up the Church in the true New Testa- 
ment sense of the word is not only to polish its 
living stones, but to work in new^ material. The 
saints fall on sleep every generation, and others 
must take their places in the militant Church. 
The baptized children of the Church come to the 
point when they should ratify the baptismal cove- 
nant made by their parents, and make covenanted 
blessings theirs by choice. Shall we wait for a re- 
vival to take them into full fellowship ? Not neces- 
saril}'. But the right sort of a revival, at the right 
time, raises a gracious tide of spiritual power that 
sweeps them over the bar into the port — the bar 
of worldliness, or doubt, or indecision. Thus a 
large percentage of our membership came into the 
Church; how large, the reader may be astonished 
to learn if he will make inquiry. And for back- 
sliders, the periodical revival is the reopening of 
the gates for their return to the fold they have 
left. 

This is the true historv of the revival in Metho- 
dism, and it is largely the same in other evangeli- 
cal bodies. It is not a question of theory, but of 
facts- -facts all pointing to the same conclusion, 
namely, that this is the method owned and blessed 
by the Holy Spirit. Its development among us 



JIozj j\[cthodi<.))i Kept Its Hold. 29 

was providential beyond question: its maintenance 
is demanded by every consideration affecting the 
salvation of men and the glory of God. All that 
can be truly said as to false methods and false re- 
vivalists may be assented to freely without any dis- 
count upon the value of genuine revival work. Sa- 
tan never fails to counterfeit as far as he can any 
good work he cannot stop. The lying wonders of 
Simon Magus counterfeited the gracious miracles 
of the true disciples of our Lord. This short chap- 
ter, which came in of itself, so to speak, as a re- 
flection on a personal statement, may end here with 
this remark: The time may come when Methodist 
and other evangelical bodies can afford to dispense 
with revivals, truly so called; but the child is not 
born who will live to see that time. 



TAKING SHAPE. 



M 



TAKING SHAPE. 

Y life in Lynchburg began at the age when 
a boy grows fastest and is most impress- 
ible. He takes shape in bod}' and soul 
between his first teens and early man- 
hood. I learned to set type in the print- 
ing office of the Lynchburg Rcfnblican^ and ac- 
quired a taste for journalism that has never left 
me. That part of my schooling, in the order of 
divine providence, was destined to have a very pos- 
itive influence upon all my after life. That was a 
time of intense political feeling and sharp politi- 
cal debate. It was also a period during which re- 
ligious controversy ran high. Political discussion 
and denominational debates were carried on ear- 
nestly by a people who had strong convictions and 
much loquacit}^ The Whigs and Democrats, 
nearly balanced in numbers, contended for politi- 
cal supremacy. Virginia was always at the front 
in those days; every voter was also a propagan- 
dist, and every youth an incipient statesman, at 
least in his own estimation. My naturalization was 
rapid, though not without friction and tribulation. 
Lynchburg boys of that day were like all other 
boys of all other times and places. They were of 
the normal type, and loved to wrestle, box, swim, 
and shoot. Being a new boy, I had to run the 
gantlet — that is to say, to fight every boy of my 
own age and size, or back down when challenged. 
My blood and my home teaching did not incline 
me to nonresistance. In fact, I always had a rel- 
ish for fighting. It is certain that I had all the 
fighting I wanted. The names of Kirkwood Otey, 
3 (33) 



34 Sunset Views, 

Paul Banks, Henry Orr, Walter Withers, Beall 
Blackford, Nick Floyd, and others, come to my 
mind — boys with whom I had battles that were 
drawn battles, none of us at any time getting 
enough drubbing to prevent renewal of the fight 
when occasion offered. Those Lynchburg boys 
were made of true metal. The strength of the 
hills was in their frames, the inspiration of a glori- 
ous history was in their souls, an heroic heredity 
was in their blood. They fought fairly, and never 
cherished malice, giving and taking hard knocks 
without flinching. In the ' * w^ar between the states ' ' 
these Lynchburg boys made their mark. They 
marched with Stonewall Jackson through the Val- 
ley of Virginia, and followed Lee in his wonder- 
ful campaigns. Braver soldiers never wore uni- 
forms. 

The Christian religion will, in its final triumph, 
bring in the reign of universal peace. The time is 
coming when the nations shall learn war no more, 
when swords shall be turned into plowshares, and 
spears into pruning hooks. Of this I have no 
doubt. Not only does the word of God promise 
it, but it seems to me patent that if Christianity 
stopped short of this result it would be to that ex- 
tent a failure. In the happier age that is coming, 
war will be looked upon as a horrible feature of 
a darker period of the world's history, when the 
evolution of God's purpose to give to the world 
knowledge, truth, freedom, and peace through the 
gospel of Jesus Christ was in its earlier and incom- 
plete stages. The noncombatant theories were 
not taught me in my boyhood, and the world had 
not then reached the promised time of peace. Cow- 
ardice was held to be a sin and a shame among 
men and boys everywhere. The whole American 
nation was possessed of this martial spirit, and it 



Taki'ui^- SIuipc. 35 

has led us to make presidents of our successful 
generals, from Washington to Taylor and Grant. 
I fought my way to peace among the Lynchburg 
boys. 

I am a noncombatant now in theory, as it 
seems to me all New Testament Christians ought 
to be. But it would perhaps be as awkward for a 
nation in this year of our Lord to announce and 
act upon noncombatant principles as it would 
have been for a Lynchburg youth among his com- 
panions a half century ago. Combativeness has 
hitherto been invariably a constituent element of 
human nature. It is in the blood, instincts, and 
history of our race. Hero worship has been the 
universal religion. What is to become of the 
combativeness after the era of universal peace has 
dawned ? Will it disappear ? Or, will the love of 
conflict find legitimate exercise in other and high- 
er fields of activity ? Progress is the law under 
which the world moves in its pathway through the 
ages — progress by conquest, progress by over- 
coming obstacles and healing down opposing 
forces of whatever kind. To him that overcom- 
eth is given the promise to eat of the tree of life, 
and of the hidden manna; and to him will be 
given the white stone in which the New Name is 
written which is known only to its recipient; and 
to him will be given power o\'er the nations. But 
the weapons of this warfare are not carnal. The 
victory that overcometh the world is the victor}' of 
faith. What does that mean to the reader? The 
true answer would reveal his status and trend. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 

FORMATIVE influences! This heading 
for this chapter presents a riddle. Who 
can know or analyze the agencies or influ- 
ences which have made him what he is? 
During the years of my stay in Lynchburg 
I was employed first in the newspaper office, and 
afterwards in a bookstore, and last of all as a post- 
office clerk. I read ever3'thing I could lay my 
hands on — mostly the newspapers of the day. The 
party press of both sides engaged my youthful 
mind, and I became an expert in partisan phrases 
and catchwords, if not an adept in constitutional 
law and political legislation. I adopted opinions at 
this time that I still retain, and became subject to 
prejudices and partialities that will be buried only 
in my grave. In the selection of my reading I had 
no guide save my own whim or choice or the limi- 
tations of my purse. If it could be so, I would 
be glad even at this late day to blot from my mind 
the memor}^ of some things I read during this pe- 
riod of my life: bad books that were read out of 
mere curiosity and thrown aside with disgust. 
Curiosity! How many young persons start on 
the paths that lead to hell to gratify curiosity ! 
The first vicious book, the first step in any of the 
ways that take hold on hell, is thus taken by so 
many that follow in the footsteps of the first trans- 
gressor in this world's tragic history. 

In the choice of my companions I exercised the 
same freedom, having no guide save my own pref- 
erence or the relationships naturally springing out 
of mv environment. If any reader of these pages 

(39) 



40 Sioisct Views. 

doubts that man is a fallen being, and that the trail 
of the serpent of sin is all over this earth, he has 
had a different experience from mine, or he must 
draw a different conclusion from the same facts. 
The vileness of what many 3'ouths call "fun "' ex- 
ceeds even its idiocy. Respect for my mother, 
and a voice in the inner soul that was never si- 
lenced, made me turn away from profanity or ob- 
scenity if I could, or 10 hear it with disgust if I 
could not shut it out. But it was no more possi- 
ble for a boy left to himself to escape contact with 
foulness of speech than with foulness of the print- 
ed page. Thus it came to pass that I heard as 
well as read much that it is painful to remember — 
the pain being mixed with gratitude to God for 
the repulsion that was always felt at its polluting 
touch. Let me say it just here: Never for one 
moment of my life have I committed any sin, or 
come into contact with sin in any of its grosser 
forms, without feeling such a repulsion for it as to 
prove to me that the Holy Spirit has never left me 
nor ceased to move upon my soul since I crossed 
the line of moral accountabilit}-. Reading over 
that last sentence, and knowing it to be the affirma- 
tion of a fact, my heart is lifted in silent gratitude 
to God as I write these words. I would close 
this paragraph with a word of advice to any young 
person who may read what I say: Be simple con- 
cerning evil. Do not start to hell from curiosity. 
Ignorance on these lines is pleasing to God and 
honorable to yourself. The flippant assumption by 
young people of a knowledge of the world on its 
dark under side is at once a weakness and a wick- 
edness — a weakness to be ashamed of, a wicked- 
ness to repent of. Avoid alike the idiocy of such 
a pretension and the vileness of such an experi- 
ence, O youthful reader, whoever you may be. 



Formative Infliioiccs. 41 

Two men's names drop from my pen point here 
while I am speaking of the formative influences of 
my youtli. They were both great and good men, 
though of different types. The one was Doctor 
WilHam A. Smith, of tlie Virginia Conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. To his 
own generation he was w^ell known — a giant in de- 
bate, one of the foremost leaders of his side in the 
strui>"";le that ended in tlie division of the Church 
in 1844. He was indeed a grand man. Lion-like 
in port, with a voice to match, in the arena he 
moved as a conqueror. There w^as a limp in his 
gait from a crippled limb, but there was none in 
his logic. In debate, w^hen sure of his premises, 
he was irresistible. His aw^akening sermons were 
terrible. Fortified by well-chosen Scripture texts, 
with exegesis and deduction clear and strong, he 
showed the sinner who listened to him that he 
was on an inclined plane sliding down hellward, 
and that repentance or ruin w^as to be chosen then 
and there. He was as simple as a child, knowing 
no concealments as he knew no fear. He believed 
in Arminian (or Wesleyan) theology and in state- 
rights politics. He trained with John Wesle3"'s 
followers in the Church and with John C. Calhoun's 
followers in the State. His call to preach must 
have been very clear and strong: nothing short of 
this could have kept him out of party politics. In 
either house of Congress he would have been con- 
spicuous in the eyes of the nation. Whether he 
was ever tempted to turn aside in this direction, I 
know not. The devil has a way of taking such 
men up into a high mountain — the mountain of 
imagination — and showing and promising to them 
the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. 
Such as have listened and yielded have found that 
he is a liar from the beginning. The preacher- 



42 Sunset Viczvs. 

politician, as a rule, is a failure for both worlds. 
Tragedies along this line have come under my ob- 
servation that are sad enough, if it were possible, 
to excite the pity of the arch deceiver himself. 
What Doctor Smith saw in me that attracted his 
notice and elicited his good will, I cannot tell; but 
it was a fortunate circumstance for me that it was 
so. When I was a clerk in the Lynchburg post 
office, he would come inside and talk with me for 
hours at a time. Rather, he would talk to me. He 
loved a good listener, such as I must have been 
then. Those monologues would be good reading 
now for persons who- think. The only record of 
them extant is in the memory of the boy w^ho heard 
them with wonder and delight. Forgetting that he 
had only a single hearer — and he only an inquisi- 
tive youth — the great man would unfold great 
schemes of thought, and argue and illustrate them 
with a power that was tremendous, and an enthu- 
siasm that was charmingly contagious. The friend- 
ship of such a man was to me a blessing and an in- 
spiration. At that time I was j^oung, and impress- 
ible in many ways. My veneration for Doctor 
Smith w^as tinged with awe because of a story that 
his parsonage w^as "haunted" at night. The 
story was, that sound of the rocking of an invis- 
ible cradle by invisible hands went on night after 
night during the still hours when the family were 
abed and the world asleep. This was never de- 
nied nor explained. The supernatural touch, real 
or fancied, all of us respond to in our earlier 3'ears. 
It answers to something that is in us all — a belief 
in a world unseen. 

The other personality that comes in here is that 
of Doctor Robert B. Thomson, of the Methodist 
Protestant Church. His benignant presence seems 
almost to pervade the room as I w^rite his name. 



Foruiativc /nffiicuccs. 43 

He was a man of medium size, who looked larger 
than he was under the afflatus that gave him the 
pulpit transfiguration. His dark eyes glowed with 
the tires of thouo-ht. About him there was the in- 
definable majjnetism that drew the hearts of the 
people, old and young, to him. He was eloquent 
in the truest and highest sense of the word. He 
had the clairvoyance that springs from the sympa- 
thy that flows out of a great heart filled with the 
love of souls. Doctor Thomson seemed to know^ 
my needs and my perils, and gave me touches that 
have influenced me to this hour. The worth of 
such a man to a community cannot be measured 
this side of the final judgment. For liim there is 
in my heart an affection that is almost filial in its 
nature. 

During all this time I lived in an atmosphere 
sweetened by the lives of holy women whom I met 
in the family circle and in the places of religious 
worship. Their faces shone in holy beauty, and 
their songs and prayers and good works made 
what is divinest in human character audible, visi- 
ble, and tangible. Four of these — Mrs. Early, 
Mrs. Otey, Mrs. Saunders, and Mrs. Daniel — 
made a quartette so Christlike that unbelief was 
abashed in their presence, and all that was holy 
and beneficent bloomed within the spheres of their 
gentle ministries. 

One of the formative influences of this period of 
my life is mentioned last of all, though not the least 
potent. From time to time the post would bring 
me a letter from my mother, breathing mother-love 
and telling me what was in her hope and prayers 
for me. Tear-stains were on the sheets, and my 
own eyes grew misty as I read them. Her love 
held me fast, and inspiration was in the thought 
that well-doing on my part would give her joy. 



44 



Sioisct Views. 



Her prayer touched God, and God touched me. 
My blessed mother ! She trod the paths of pain 
and toil and heartache and self-sacrifice through 
all her life. I was too blind to see what I owed to 
her while she was yet living her life of service 
here on earth. Like too many others, the mother- 
love with its self-abnegation and self-devotion — 
the self-abnegation that denies nothing that love 
demands, and the self-devotion that gives all that 
love can crive — I took as a matter of course. I now 
see more clearly and feel more deeply what I owe 
to my mother. May I here express the hope that 
some day, somewhere, I may meet her and tell her 
the love and gratitude that are in my heart? Some 
day, somewhere? 



FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 



FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 

FIRST in my memory is George W. Dye — 
Father Dye he was called by the people — 
who in family prayer at my father's house 
seemed to talk with God as friend talks to 
friend, and who at the old Sharon camp 
ground on a Sunday morning, as it seemed to m}^ 
boyish mind, turned loose a spiritual cyclone upon 
the awe-stricken multitude. The revivals he con- 
ducted were of such a character that no one who 
believed at all in a supernatural religion could 
doubt that they were the work of God. Gam- 
blers, debauchees, profane swearers, and even 
drunkards, were powerfully converted — to use a 
phrase that has been current among the people 
called ^Methodists. The expression is just right: 
in no other way could they have been converted 
at all. Sin is a powerful enslaver: Satan is a 
strong tyrant, holding the castle of the human 
soul. The power that dislodges him must be still 
stronger. The gospel of Christ is the power of 
God unto salvation. Power! Those old circuit 
riders had it. All substitutes for it are worthless. 
The more machinery you have without power, the 
more worthless is any organization. Father Dye 
types a class not yet extinct. 

Another one that comes to mind was George 
W. Childs — the most ghostly-looking man I ever 
saw. His frame was tall and thin, his step noise- 
less, his face as pale as death, and he had a rapt, 
far-away look that made him seem to be not of the 
earth earthy, as are common men. It was easy to 
believe that there is a great spirit-world after see- 

(47) 



^8 Sunset J^iczus. 

ing this unworldly old circuit rider. The strange 
power that attended his preaching could be ac- 
counted for in no other way. It was said of him 
that he had lain in a trance three days and nights, 
that he was never known to laugh afterwards, and 
that he was never heard to speak of it. Whether 
or not like Paul he saw things not lawful to be ut- 
tered — or thought he saw them — we cannot say. 
But that then and there he had an experience of 
some sort, that thenceforward made him a changed 
man, is beyond doubt. Boy as I was, I was strange- 
ly thrilled and awed in the presence of this man of 
God — for such he was. His very looks refuted 
materialism. 

The influence of William JNI. Crumley (men- 
tioned elsewhere in these pages) has never left 
me since I last saw him in 1866. In the pulpit he 
too had that strange power that no one was ever 
able to analyze or explain. He was not eloquent 
in any ordinar}^ sense of the word. His sermons 
were the most informal talks, in a subdued con- 
versational tone ; and yet it w^as no unusual occur- 
rence for the crowded congregations that attended 
his ministr}^ to be wrought up to the point of im- 
mediate surrender to Christ. In his own way he 
made a " still hunt" among his parishioners that 
found them all. No member of his flock was left 
unfed. He was a revivalist everywhere — he was 
himself a revival incarnated. I never heard him 
speak in a loud voice. I never heard him make 
an appeal to the emotions that was not also an ap- 
peal to the conscience. That I had even a short 
season of pastoral training with such a man is a 
fact for which I have never ceased to be grateful. 
He was a man of God : that solves the secret of his 
success. 

A very different sort of man was Leonidas Ros- 



Four Old-tinic Revivalists. 49 

ser, but he too was a revivalist whose power was the 
wonder of his brethren. He was by no means a 
quiet man anywhere or any time when awake. It 
is hkelv that even his dreams had a dramatic and 
pictorial quality. He w^as criticised, smiled at, 
and followed up and listened to by multitudes. 
Manv were converted under his ministry. If 
there could be such a being as a sanctified dandy, 
he was one. The fit of his clothes, the pose of his 
bodv, the seemingl}' self-conscious look that never 
left him for a moment, the dramatic recital of in- 
cidents in which he himself was an actor, could 
not fail to elicit remark, especially in ministerial 
circles. (Note: Ministers in their proneness to 
criticise one another are not worse than other 
men.) But what was the secret of Rosser's 
power? It was the genuine earnestness of the 
man. He knew that the gospel he preached was 
the power of God unto salvation. His ineradica- 
ble Rosserisms were on the surface : deeper with- 
in his soul was the burning love for souls that 
somehow melts the hearts of the hardest sinners. 
He had a faith so mighty that all sorts of peo- 
ple, saints and sinners alike, caught its contagion. 
The individuality of the man was not lost, but the 
excellency of the power was of God. The quali- 
ty of his ministry was attested by its fruits. He 
was a man of God, not without human infirmity — 
where is the man who is not? — whose natural gifts 
as a speaker and charms of personalit}^ were sup- 
plemented by that one element that differentiates 
human eloquence from apostolic power. 

Here is another revivalist, presenting a contrast 
to Rosser in every particular save one: John Forbes, 
a local preacher, who during many years was as 
a flame of fire over the Dan River region in Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina. He was a man of the 
4 



50 Sunset Views. 

people; poor as to this ^vorlc^s goods; without 
book learning, except tliat found in the one Book 
of books; living in a cabin that could not be called 
a cottage without a verbal strain; a tall, gangling, 
ungainly, genial, free-and-easy sort of rural apostle. 
He was as guileless as a child, andfeared not the face 
of man. The common people heard him gladly, 
while the more cultured listened to him with won- 
der. His sermons presented two points: the ter- 
rors of the law, and the freeness and fullness of 
gospel grace. *'The w^ages of sin is death, but 
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
our Lord" — that was his message; he had no 
other. It was God's own message, and it had 
God's own attestation. x\ccording to the prom- 
ise, it killed and made alive. Critics were dis- 
armed, scoffers were silenced, quibblers were con- 
founded, cavilers were convinced. If it was not 
the power of God, what was it that wrought so 
mightily by tlie ministry of this large-boned, 
large-featured, unlearned, simple-hearted, farmer- 
preacher? Because of his plainness of speech on 
one occasion some lewd fellows of the baser sort 
threatened to give him a beating if he ever dared 
to hold another meeting in their neighborhood. 
Their threat did not frighten Forbes, who soon af- 
terwards began a special protracted service among 
them. The threat of the offended parties had been 
given wide publicity, and a vast congregation as- 
sembled, many of them drawn by the expectation 
of a row. The old preacher opened the service 
with the usual exercises, and then announced a 
text embodying his one pulpit topic — the certainty 
that unrepented sin would be punished, and that 
God was ready to bless and save all who would 
truly repent of their sins. Toward the close of 
the sermon, in describing the securitv of the faith- 



Four OId-ti)}ic Revivalists. 51 

ful and their final coronation, he "' got happy,"" as 
the phiin countr}- people expressed it — that is to 
say, his soul was flooded with the joy of the II0I3' 
Ghost. '' Where are those fellows who came here 
to-day to whip me ? ' ' he asked. ' * Why, He would 
not let a thousand such harm me. Where are 
they?" he repeated; and as he spoke, with his eyes 
shut and his rugged face shining, he left the preach- 
ing stand and made his way up and down the 
aisles, exhorting as he moved. " My God," he 
exclaimed, "wouldn't let fifty thousand sinners 
whip me to-day ! — but boys," he continued with a 
sudden overflow of tenderness, " he is able to for- 
give and save you all this day," placing his hand 
upon the head of one of the opposing party as he 
spoke. The effect was indescribable. A might\- 
wave of feeling swept over the entire assembly 
amid songs and shoutings on the part of be- 
lievers, with tears and sobbings among the un- 
converted. The preacher got no whipping that 
day. The meeting was kept up. Among its con- 
verts were most of the hostile gang who had come 
to whip the preacher. 

When the old man died he did not own enough 
of this world's goods to buy a burial lot, but his 
name is as ointment poured forth in all that Dan 
River region, where on both sides of the state line 
so man}^ of the holy dead, whose images rise be- 
fore my mental vision as I write, are sleeping in 
Jesus, awaiting the morning of the resurrection. 

'* The treasure is in, earthen vessels, that the ex- 
cellencvof the power might be seen to be of God, 
and not of men." 



A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 



A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 

THAT was a curious sort of school that I 
taught. The teacher, his methods, and his 
classes were all unique. I look back upon 
this episode in my life with amused sur- 
prise — if that is a good phrase with the 
right meaning. My father, animated by patriot- 
ism and zeal for the war party to which he be- 
longed, had gone as a soldier to the Mexican war, 
in which he did his dut}^ was crippled for life, 
came back alive, and drew a pension from the 
government with patriotic punctuality to the end of 
his life. During his absence I lived at home with 
my mother. The neighbors, who always over- 
rated my learning, requested me to open a school 
for their children, and I did so. I had about sixtj^ 
pupils, ranging from the alphabet up as high as I 
could go. Classification was after a system — no, 
a method — of my own: system was not in it 
Some of the older pupils had formerly been my 
schoolmates; and if they did not know more than 
I did, it must surely have been their own fault. 
We all did pretty much as we pleased, and had a 
good time. The government of the school was 
mild, but mixed. Tlie use of the rod was then 
still in fashion, but I did not use it often. The 
switches that were kept in sight behind my desk 
were placed there mainly to satisfy the expectation 
of my patrons, and for moral effect. One bow- 
legged boy — still living at this writing — at the end 
of six months had failed to master the alphabet 
under my instruction. There were other pupils 
who knew more than their teacher, especially in 

(55) 



5 6 Sunset Views, 

mathematics, in which he was never strong: 
these were kept busy in other studies in which 
he w^as more advanced. The good will of all con- 
cerned supplemented my shortcomings. 

Some of my old pupils are still living. When now 
and then I meet with one of them, the greeting on both 
sides is hearty. Fewof them are left. When we meet 
in the spirit-world, there will be a look of inquisi- 
tiveness in our eyes: the inquiry will then come 
up, What did we do for each other back there at 
that old-time school in those old days? Not much 
was done, but something. My pupils got the best 
that was in me then; and the fact that I was their 
teacher and exemplar made my best better than it 
would otherwise have been. That is the way God 
educates us. Tests come to us that reveal to us 
our ignorance and weakness. Responsibility comes 
to us to steady and strengthen us. If you would 
teach a boy to swim, throw him into deep water. 
The 3^outh who is petted and praised and coddled 
at home until he thinks it a great feat to rise and 
dress himself for breakfast, and believes that the 
chief functions of young manhood are to excite the 
admiration of one sex and the envy of another, 
thrown on his own resources develops a latent man- 
hood that astonishes himself and all who know him. 
Necessity is the mother of manhood in action. 
Many men have saved their boys b}" losing their 
money. Just as man}^ have ruined their boys by 
making money for them without training them for 
its use. At times I have been tempted to harbor 
in my soul a complaint that the fortunes of the 
famil}' to which I belonged went down in my youth 
to a point so low that I lost the advantages and op- 
portunities of other youths of my own age. But per- 
haps oftener I have thanked God that by my pov- 
erty I escaped in some measure the perils that were 



A Uiiiquc Pcdag-ogical Ii^xpcriciicc. 57 

fatal to so many of them. It might have been that 
with a better mental training and a broader culture 
my life would have been larger and more fruitful 
of good. Or, it might have been that with the freer 
use of money, giving me access to indulgences out 
of my reach, with the lack of the spur of neces- 
sity to labor, I might have been one of that great 
army of young men of my country who w^ere vic- 
tims of plenty — slaughtered by the vices that lie in 
wait for youth when it is idle and full of passion. 
Adversity is a good mother. Prosperity is a de- 
ceiver to many. 

The pupil that got most good out of that unique 
school was m3'self . My knowledge of some of the 
branches taught was increased, and the dignity 
of pedagogy, while it did not sit easy on a youth 
of my temperament, w^as a good thing for me 
to feel or to assume. The country schoolmas- 
ter has been described by Washington Irving and 
many others. There were some among the rural 
pedagogues w^ho had scholarship, discipline, and 
moral force, but there were man}^ others no better 
qualified for the work of education than I was. It 
was not time wasted after all. Those bi<r barefoot 
bo3'S and rosy, laughing country girls learned a 
little, and I learned a lesson that has JDeen relearned 
by me many times since — namely, that all I did not 
know would make a very big book. The attempt 
to teach something that 3'ou think 3'ou know will 
give you a clear perception of the difference be- 
tween vague notions and true knowledge. If a 
term of teaching, long or short, could be included 
in every post-graduate course, there would be fewer 
failures by men w^ho sport degrees. If there is any 
wisdom in this suggestion, and if any will act on 
it, let it be put to my credit. 

All this time the Methodist Church kept its arms 



58 Sunset Views. 

around me, never withdrawing them for a moment. 
I heard the preaching of its preachers, I read the 
Christian Advocate and such miscellaneous Meth- 
odist reading as was then current in country dis- 
tricts. The ubiquitousness of the itinerant S3^stem 
was illustrated in the fact that in town or countr}^ 
at home or on my travels, I have never for one day 
of my life been beyond the reach of the wide- 
reaching arms of that branch of the Church of 
Christ called Methodism. 



IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 



IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 

AT the close of the war with Mexico I went 
to Richmond, Virginia, and there abode 
for some time. Richmond w^as then noted 
for big Whig majorities, plucky Demo- 
crats, abundant Baptists of all shades of 
color, lively ^^ethodists, fine-toned, middle-of-the- 
road Episcopalians, and Presbyterians w^ho knew 
their catechisms and walked with God. The 
JJ7i/o- and the Eiiqiii7'cr had for many years kept 
up a political duel of national notoriety and influ- 
ence. They furnished ammunition and watch- 
words for the partisans of Henry Clay and Andrew 
Jackson over all the land. There was a touch of 
chivalry in their fighting that was admirable, but 
it did not suffice to avert a tragedy that made good 
men of all parties mourn. The duello was even 
then an anachronism: grow^n men playing Ivanhoe 
after Ivanhoe and his like were dead and buried. 
By virtue of the ability of its party organs, the 
zeal of the local following, and the traditions of 
the past, Richmond was then virtually the political 
capital of the Union. The place w^as always in a 
political whirl. The women did not think of vot- 
ing and holding oflice, but everyone of them who 
was not busy in Church work was in some way 
active in politics. Some were busy both for the 
Church and the party they loved. The Baptists 
had great swing with the negroes in Richmond at 
that time — and have not lost it yet. 

The African Baptist Church was a wonder to 
visitors from the North and from the old world 
who came to Richmond w^ith the notion in their 

(6,) 



62 Siiusc/ J^iezvs. 

heads that negro slavery was indeed the sum of 
all villainies, and that a slaveholding community 
was divided into only two parts — brutalized black 
slaves and cruel white owners. For the thou- 
sandth time I repeat here that I am glad that slav- 
ery is gone. It had to go. It had its day, and it 
had done its work. But let me say, what has 
been better said by wiser men, that the roots of 
all that is most hopeful in the present condition 
and prospects of the African race in these United 
States of America, and in all the world, including 
Africa, are to be found in the work that was done 
for them by the evangelical Churches in the South 
before the abolition of slaver}^ The Baptists and 
the Methodists led in this good work for the negro 
race. On the one side, immersion appealed to the 
love of the spectacular that is in them. Freedom 
of speech and in song appealed to a race that is full 
of eloquence and full of music, on the other. It 
has been a close race. That God may still bless 
both sides, and the final victor be made to do his 
very best to wdn, is a prayer in which all good Meth- 
odists and Baptists may join. The gospel of Christ 
will solve the negro problem, and all other prob- 
lems, in its own good time and in its own best way. 
The two preachers I heard oftenest in Richmond 
were Doctor David S. Doggett, Methodist, and 
Doctor T. V. Moore, Presbyterian. They were 
pulpit princes of the first rank. The descrip- 
tives that would put Doggett before the reader 
would be: lucidity, elegance, vigor, unction — 
with emphasis on the last word. He drew and 
delighted, edified and held admiring crowds. His 
pulpit power made him a bishop and sustained 
him in the office. He was a light that burned and 
shined. In administrative genius and parlimen- 
tary tact he was not notable: in the pulpit he did 



In RicJninnid in tlic forties. 63 

a work and made a name the Church will not let 
die. In an enumeration of the ten foremost preach- 
ers of American Methodism, the name of David 
S. Do<^o"ett could not be omitted. About Doc- 
tor Moore there was a charm that everybody felt 
but none could fully define. He was a tall, spare- 
built man, with a face that was pale and scholarly 
yet strong, with a resonance in his voice that 
pleased the ear while he reasoned of heavenly 
things and persuaded sinners to be reconciled to 
God. He read his sermons, but he read them in 
such a way as to make the hearer feel that he was 
listening to a confidential letter that the preacher 
had studied out and prayed over for his special 
benefit. He being dead, yet speaketh. And in the 
Richmond pulpit of that day stood Anthony Dib- 
rell — a tall, dark man, with the port of a prophet 
of the Lord, from whose sermons flashed the light- 
nings of Sinai and the glory of the cross. By ev- 
ery token, he was a man of God. There was also 
Doctor Leonidas Rosser, a mighty revivalist in his 
day — a man with the fervor and almost the elo- 
quence of a Whitelield. His hortatory power was 
extraordinar}'. He touched his word-pictures with 
the strongest colors : he was a master of the adjec- 
tive in the pulpit, if ever a man was. Great congre- 
gations were moved under his preaching, and whole 
communities were swept into the current of the 
revivals that attended his ministry. There was 
Doctor John E. Edwards, a declamatory whirlwind 
set to music — a man of small stature ph3^sically, 
firmly set, with a large, well-shaped head, blond- 
ish hair and skin, bright deep-blue eyes that 
flashed or melted as he spoke, and a voice as clear 
as a silver trumpet, and enunciation the most 
rapid of any man I ever heard. A distinguished 
American statesman, after hearing him preach, 



64 Sufisct ]^iczus. 

said : ''There are two great declaimers in the Unit- 
ed States — Rufus Choate and John E. Edwards — 
and the greater of the two is Edwards." Then 
there was Doctor Leroy M. Lee, who w^as the 
editor of the Richmond Christian Advocate^ then 
in the prime of his powers — a man who was ready 
for a tilt with any and all persons opposed to Ar- 
minian theology and Methodist polity. He was a 
man of convictions, and fed his readers and hear- 
ers on strong meat. It was a sturdy sort of Metho- 
dists that were reared in the families that took and 
read his paper. They could give a reason for the 
faith that w^as in them. In the pulpit he was in- 
clined to polemics and pugnacity, but could and 
did often preach a gospel that was tender and 
sweet and joyful — because the old editor had felt 
its tenderness, its sweetness, and its joy. Doctor 
Lee had in his physiognomy and in his character 
some of the features that belonged to that other 
Lee of Virginia who led in the field the armies of 
the Confederate States of America. These men 
were m}- tutors while I was still in a special sense 
in the formative period of my life. There are oth- 
ers whose names come to my mind, but 1 forbear. 
Their influence I thankfully acknowledge, and will 
never lose. 

Among the men I then met in Richmond was 
Edgar i\llan Poe. I have a very vivid impression 
of him as he w^as the last time I saw him on a 
warm day in 1849. Clad in a spotless w^hite linen 
suit, with a black velvet vest, and Panama hat, he 
was ') man who would be notable in any compan}'. 
I met him in the office of the Examiner, the new 
Democratic newspaper which was making its 
mark in political journalism. It was ultra state 
rights in tone. John M. Daniel, its editor in 
chief, put into his editorials a caustic wit, a free- 



In ]\icJu)U)}id ill the Kortics. 65 

dom in the use of personalities, and a brilliant 
rhetoric that won immediate success. Even the 
victims of his satire must have admired the keen- 
ness of his weapon and the skill of his thrust. There 
was a natural aOinity between Poe and Daniel. Ar- 
rangements were made by which the scope of the 
ExcDHiiicr was to be enlarged, and Poe to become 
its literary editor. Through the good offices of cer- 
tain parties well known in Richmond, Poe had 
taken a pledge of total abstinence from all intox- 
icatinor drinks. His sad face — it was one of the 
saddest faces I ever saw — seemed to brighten a lit- 
tle, as a new purpose and fresh hope sprang up in 
his heart. The Richmond people did a thing for him 
in away that had the old Virginia touch. He was 
invited to deliver a lecture; the price of admission 
was fixed at five dollars a ticket, and three hun- 
dred persons were packed into the assembly rooms 
of the old Exchange Hotel at that price. The re- 
markable essay on '*The Poetic Principle," found 
in his prose works, w^as composed for that occasion. 
I had the pleasure of hearing it read, and remember 
how forcibly I was struck with his tone and manner 
of delivery. The emphasis that he placed upon the 
dictum that the sole function of art was to ministet 
to the love of the beautiful was especially notable. 
With the $1,500, the proceeds of the lecture, in 
hand, he started to New York for the purpose of 
settling up his affairs there, preparatory to enter- 
ing upon his work on the Exmniner in Richmond. 
The tragic sequel is w^ell known. Stopping in 
Baltimore en roiifc, he attended a birthday party 
to which he had been invited. The fair hostess 
pledged him in a glass of wine; he sipped it de- 
spite his pledge ; that sip w^as as a spark of fire to 
a powder magazine. A few days afterwards he lay 
dead in a hospital, where he died of mania a ^oUt. 
5 



66 Sunset Views. 

He had the sensitive orfjanization of a man of a^en- 
ius, and for him there was no middle ground be- 
tween total abstinence and drunkenness. The 
thought will press upon the mind: Who can esti- 
mate the loss to American literature by this un- 
timely death ? During the two tremendous decades 
from 1850 to 1870 what might he not have achieved 
on the lines of his special endowment? The sud- 
den quenching of such a light in such a way is a 
tragedy too deep for words. It was the w^ork of 
the alcoholic devil — the devil that some young 
man who has genius, or thinks he has it, may be 
hugging to his bosom as he reads this page. God 
pity such folly ! Is it not time that this devil were 
chained in a Christian land? And should not ev- 
ery good man and woman help in doing it? I am 
not sorry that I took an humble part in the effort to 
save Edgar Allan Poe from the doom that overtook 
him. [A different and more favorable account has 
been given of Poe's death by a recent writer of 
respectability and evidently good spirit. The ac- 
count given by me is that which was current at the 
time.] 

Thus my schooling, such as it was, went on in 
Richmond — taking in religion, politics, literature, 
and whatever else was going on at the time. It 
w^as a taste of many dishes that had a keen relish 
for a youth who loved to read and was a student 
of human nature in his own way. I was pulled 
this way and that by opposing forces and conflict- 
ing ideas; but by the grace of God Methodism 
had the strongest hold on me, and kept it. 



AFLOAT. 



AFLOAT. 

THE word that makes the heading of this 
chapter describes the state of my mind and 
the manner of my hfe for some years just 
before and after I had reached twentv-one 
years of age. I was afloat. My inherited 
behefs were under review. Every young man 
who thinks at all comes to this point. I read ev- 
erything that came within my reach. I talked with 
all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects. Among 
these subjects was Swedenborgianism. Having 
heard that John C. Calhoun was a disciple of that 
wonderful Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg — seer, 
madman, enthusiast, as you like — I felt a desire to 
know more of the man and his system. After 
reading his "Arcana Celestia," the treatise on 
** Heaven and Hell," and his other works, I reached 
the conclusion that Swedenborg had as clear a 
view of some phases of religious truth as any other 
uninspired man; that much learning and thinking 
made him mad; and that at length he mistook the 
dreams and vagaries of an overwrought mind for 
divine revelations. I am glad that I read Sweden- 
borg's works, and feel assured that they left a de- 
posit with me of profitable suggestion that I will 
never lose. He was a visionary, a man to be classed 
with dreamers and theorizers rather than with the 
few elect spirits who have been the real religious lead- 
ers of the world. The first notable Swedenborgian 
I ever met was Richard K. Cralle, of Lynchburg, 
Virginia — a man whose brain was as massive and 
as angular as the unique dwelling built by him on 
one of the many hills of that hilty city on the spark- 

(<i9) 



70 Sunset Views. 

ling, swift-flowing James. This house was called 
*'The Castle." It was built of stone, turreted, 
many-windowed, with corridors winding in and out, 
like a fortress of the middle ages, with a weird, 
ghostly effect that gave rise to a belief among the 
colored people and others that it was ''haunted." 
I had heard Mr. Cralle read some of Mr. Cal- 
houn's letters to him, in which his religious be- 
liefs were expressed with the freedom of intimate 
friendship. Swedenborgianism is a queer com- 
pound — fascinating, elusive, disappointing. It has 
enough of scriptural and philosophical truth to whet 
the appetite of the reader, but lacks coherence, 
solidit}^ credibility, and symmetry. Swedenborg is 
not a lamp to light our path in the night, but an 
aurora borealis that flashes across the cold and 
darkened skies of speculative theology. So I 
think, having in my thought just now a number 
of Swedenborgian friends whose beautiful lives 
proved that they are walking in white with their 
Lord the Christ of God. 

The glamour of Universalism flashed upon my 
pathway during this time — a belief that always had 
an unsatisfying charm for me, but for which I can 
find no sufficient warrant in the teaching of the Bi- 
ble, nor in the analogies of nature, nor in the un- 
challenged facts of human history. In certain sen- 
timental moods all of us have Universalist fancies 
or impulses. But God in his word declares that 
the soul that sinneth must die, and his administra- 
tion throughout all departments of his government 
of the universe illustrates the awful truth — the aw- 
ful necessity, let us say. 

Unitarianism attracted my attention, through the 
writings of some of the gifted men who professed 
and expounded it; but it never disturbed my mind 
for one moment. The divinit}^ of Jesus Christ can- 



Afloat. 71 

not be questioned without impeaching his veracity. 
The divinity of Jesus Christ cannot be denied with- 
out denyint^ the record o^iven of him in the New Tes- 
tament Scriptures. Jesus Christ was God manifest 

in the flesh, or he was stop ! I will not write the 

words that imply the admission of doubt. He was 
very God as w^ell as very man. Unitarianism may 
be toyed with by dilettanti, and by a class of reli- 
gionists whose hearts challenge what their pride 
of intellect would deny; but it never had, and 
can never have, any large following among peo- 
ple w^ho believe the Bible and have the true heart- 
huncrer of earnestness in the search for rest to 

o 

their souls. 

Calvinism staggered me then, as it does now. 
I have known so many grand and good men and 
women who were Calvinists, or thought they were, 
that I feel like lifting my hat when I hear the name 
of the inexorable old logician of Geneva. When 
we speak of the divine foreknowledge and the 
free agency of man, and all correlated facts, we 
are easily confounded; but when we read that 
Jesus Christ by the grace of God tasted death for 
every man, the doctrine of election seems clear 
enou<{h. Here it is: "The elect are whosoever 
will; the nonelect are whosoever won't." That 
is about the way they all put it now. I never got 
an3'thing but good from a Presbyterian pulpit or 
book. 

By some sort of instinct, or by some sort of good 
fortune, I began about this time to move south- 
w^ard. I never did like cold weather. When the 
thermometer sinks toward zero, my physical com- 
fort sinks with it. The familiar hymn that speaks 
of heaven as a place where there are " no chilling 
winds " always had a special charm for me. One 
winter I spent in Raleigh, North Carolina. The 



^2 SiDiset }^icws. 

Raleigh of that day was unique — a city whose very 
groves of oaks and stately old mansions had a quiet 
dignity in keeping with the character and manners 
of the people. It was notafussy or garish capital; 
it was serene and sound. The state legislature, 
then in session, was a study. Its lower branch was 
presided over by Mr. Dobbin, afterwards Secretary 
of the Navy under President Pierce's administra- 
tion — a man who combined the polish of a French 
courtier with the wisdom and honesty of a patriot 
whose head was clear and whose heart was true. 
His opposite was General Cotton — a colossal com- 
moner from Chatham county, whose oratory had a 
cyclonic energy, whose figures of speech were as 
gigantic as was his own physique, whose orations 
excited wonder among his colleagues and applause 
in the galleries. The Standard^ the Democratic 
organ, was conducted by William W. Holden, a 
sturdy, scholarly-looking man with heavy black 
eyebrows and pallid complexion, who then harped 
on state rights and hurrahed for Andrew Jackson. 
The Register^ the Whig organ, was conducted by 
Gales and Seaton, and had long been an exponent 
of the policies and a supporter of the candidates of 
the party whose idol was Henry Clay. Among the 
preachers I heard in Raleigh was Doctor Rufus T. 
Heflin, one of its Methodist pastors — a man whose 
face was that of one who held secret communion 
with God, and whose preaching had that indefina- 
ble yet unmistakable quality, the unction from on 
high, that differentiates the true preaching of the 
gospel from all merely human oratory. This man 
and his preaching were a link that bound me still to 
the Church in which I was born and baptized. 

I spent a season in Columbia, South Carolina. It 
was then as now the capital of that state ; and a 
lively capital it was in that day of big cotton crops 



AUoat. 73 



and other big things, good and bad, to match. It 
was an aristocratic city then, having an aristocracy 
of birth, an aristocracy of money, an aristocracy 
of brains, and an aristocracy of courage. Wade 
Hampton, son of the father so named also, was 
then a roystering young fellow with a practically 
unlimited bank account, a lover of sport, and afraid 
of nothing — typical of the rich young Southerner 
of that day. The genius of John C. Calhoun and 
the scholarship and oratory of William C. Preston 
and others like them had inoculated South Caroli- 
na and its capital city with their opinions and in- 
spired their youth with their ideals : patriotism was 
a passion and the hustings and the forum the lad- 
ders to civic glory. Chivalr}' was not a misnomer 
wdth those South Carolinians. The one unpardon- 
able sin in a public man was cowardice : it was the 
one thing despised by all men in all the grades of 
society. The fashion, so to speak, set in the di- 
rection of a lofty public virtue and an ardent and 
uncalculating patriotism and state pride, and chiv- 
alry that was well named. That chivalry was at 
times rash and passionate, but it had its roots in 
convictions that were genuine, and a devotion that 
was absolute. Doctor Whitefoord Smith was the 
preacher I heard oftenest in Columbia — and what 
a preacher he was ! All sorts of persons crowded 
to hear him. He had the easy swing of the hus- 
tings and the brilliant rhetoric of the schools, the 
evangelical glow of a man of prayer and the polish 
of a man who knew and loved the classics. Meth- 
odism in South Carolina was then aglow and mov- 
ing. Bishop William Capers was in the prime of 
his strength — a man who was a Chrysostom in the 
pulpit, a Barnabas to the sorrow-stricken. Doctor 
William jNI. Wightman was then editing the South- 
ern Christian Advocate, published at Charleston, 



74 Sunset Views. 

and he was putting into it the vigorous thought, 
logical method, and elegant diction for which he 
was distinguished. He was afterwards a professor 
in the Southern University, and then made a bish- 
op ; but he never did better work for his Lord and 
for the Church than when he was editor of its or- 
gan in South Carolina. The Methodism of the 
state and of its capital was strong enough to be 
seen and felt even by a wayfarer. It made for 
me an atmosphere warm enough to keep alive in 
my soul the seeds of truth that had been sown 
therein. The arms of my mother-Church were 
still around me, holding me back from evil and 
ruin. If these pages shall ever see the light, how 
many readers will be ready to join with me in 
thanksgiving to God for the influence of Metho- 
dism which goes everywhere and always carries a 
blessing I And how many will also be ready to 
join with me in a prayer that it may never lose the 
love that impels its movement, or the light that 
shines upon its pathway of blessing. 



A TURNING POlNr. 



A TURNING POINT. 

AN attack of typhoid fever was a turning 
point in my life. It* came to me in the cit\' 
of Macon, Georgia. I was a stranger, and 
at a hotel. The mulatto boy, Albert, who 
waited upon me, saved my life. The doc- 
tors had given me up to die. I heard them say to 
the boy: "Give him anything he asks for." I 
made a sign that I w^anted ice water, and it was 
brought — a pitcher full, cold as it could be. I 
drank, and drank, and drank ! I felt the cool- 
ness to my very finger-tips, and said to myself in- 
wardly, " I will get well" — and I did. It was the 
ice water that did it. The surprised doctors post- 
poned the funeral that they expected. I came up 
out of the jaws of death, and by slow degrees ap- 
petite and strength came back to me. I had time 
to think and pray, to look at my past life, and to 
ponder the paths of my feet. By a happy coinci- 
dence the mulatto boy, who was my nurse, be- 
longed to the man who became my bosom friend 
— Robert A. Smith, that unique combination of 
lawyer, soldier, and saint, of whom I have written 
elsewhere. Chivalry of the highest type of the old 
South and saintliness as sturdy as Luther's and as 
tender as Fletcher's were blended in this man. He 
crossed my path in the providence of God at a 
critical moment in my life, and I shall thank God 
forever that it was so. In a prayer meeting, or by 
the bedside of the sick or the dying, I never heard 
a man pray who seemed to be nearer to God. At 
the head of his military company, the Macon Vol- 
unteers, I never saw a knightlier figure. He was 

(77) 



78 Sioisct Views. 

what will be regarded as a strange anomaly in the 
good time coming for this earth — a Christian sol- 
dier. It is distinctly promised in the word of the 
Lord that wars are to cease to the ends of the 
earth, and that the nations shall learn war no more. 
This is a strange thought in this day of war ships 
that cost millions of dollars each, huge standing 
armies, forts, arsenals, and military schools for 
which the masses are loaded down with taxation, 
and peace is kept between civilized nations by fear 
and skillful balancing of power rather than by rea- 
son, persuasion, and religion. Civilized nations, 
did I say? It is not Christian civilization, surely. 
The Prince of Peace will bring in another sort — 
and it will be here in this world, for it is his world. 
He shall reign until all enemies are put under his 
feet. War is the child of sin, and the enemy of all 
that is good. The groans of the dying victims of 
the sinking war ship Maine, in the harbor of Ha- 
vana, are in my ears as I write to-day — February 
23, 1898 — mingling with the music of the song of 
universal peace heard by the ear of faith as it comes 
nearer and yet nearer. 

That robust yet tearful evangelist, Doctor 
James E. Evans, was then pastor of the Mulberry 
Street Methodist Church in Macon. He was a 
great man all round — a Church financier of the 
first order in ability; an expository preacher, who 
rightly divided and pointedly applied the word of 
truth ; a weeping prophet, whose tears were not the 
expression of nervous weakness and shallow sen- 
timentality, but the overflowing of a mighty soul 
travailing in agony over lost souls. All Macon 
was stirred by this deep-toned preacher, who had 
power with God and man. This revival wave 
struck me when I was ready for it. On my sick- 
bed and during my convalescence the Holy Spirit 



A Turni'iig Point. 79 

had spoken to my soul the things that made for my 
peace because 1 was quiet enough to Hsten. I 
thought on my \va3's, and turned my feet to the 
testimonies of God with a solemn earnestness born 
of reflection and under the leading of the Holy 
Spirit that had followed me and striven with me 
all my life. Kneeling at the chancel with others 
one night never to be forgotten, amid prayer and 
holy song, Doctor William li. Ellison bent above 
me and softly spoke to me some words that helped 
me then and there to give myself wholly to the 
Lord — to choose the Lord Jesus Christ as my Sav- 
iour, with a purpose to follow him as long as I 
lived. There was no reserve in my consecration. 
Heaven came into my soul — the heaven of holy 
peace, and the joy of the Holy Ghost. The expe- 
rience was unspeakably solemn and sweet. Yes, 
thank God, it is unspeakably solemn and sweet, 
for I feel it now, as I did then. It is the same in 
its quality, but — let me write it with humility and 
adoring thankfulness — it is fuller and deeper after 
the lapse of years between the early fifties and this, 
next to the closing years of the nineties. I need 
not give a name to tliis experience. The initiated 
reader knows what it is ; the uninitiated may know. 
Whosoever will may take freely of this water of 
life; and he may do so now. 



INITIATED 



INITIATED. 

THE year 1854 was the date of my entrance 
upon the traveling ministry of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, South, as my 
life work. The only discount upon my 
grateful joy in recording this fact is from 
a consciousness of my shortcomings. But God 
in his grace and goodness has so borne with me 
and sustained me during all these years that grati- 
tude ought to be the dominant note of my song — 
and it is. The Georgia Conference met at At- 
lanta that year. The Atlanta of 1854 ^^'^^ smaller 
than that of to-day, but it was of like quality — 
wide-awake, busy, but not too busy to be hospita- 
ble. Bishop William Capers presided; J. Blake- 
1}' Smith was secretary. It was a venerable body 
of men. Somewhat has been said of some of 
them by me elsewhere. To them Georgia Meth- 
odism is indebted for much of what it has achieved. 
For the secretary, Brother J. Blakely Smith, I 
felt a peculiar regard as a friend and brother. 
This special friendship between us had its begin- 
ning in a singular incident, which is here recited 
for a good purpose, after some hesitation. It hap- 
pened in this way. Secretary Smith was a large- 
framed man, with florid complexion, deep, strong 
voice, and a masterful way in what he said and 
did. Not knowing him as he was, my first impres- 
sion concerning him was unfavorable. He seemed 
to me to be impatient and rude in his treatment of 
a large proportion of the preachers of the Confer- 
ence. My ideal of the ministerial office was a 
most lofty one, and I was shocked and grieved 

(S3) 



84 Sunset J7czc's. 

at what seemed to me so palpable a violation of 
ministerial and brotherly courtesy. My surprise 
and resentment increased daily. At length, during 
a forenoon session, E. P. Pitchford, a venerable 
and holy man, one of the patriarchs of the body, 
rose just in front of me and asked the secretary 
some question pertaining to the business of the 
Conference. The answer was crusty, even to rude- 
ness: in substance it seemed to imply that it was 
a silly question, such as only a simpleton would 
ask. A look of pain came over the good old man's 
face; he stood a moment in silence, then sank 
into his seat, bent his head forward shaded by his 
hands, while the tears coursed down his cheeks. 
Before I knew what I was doing I was on ni}^ feet, 
and being recognized by the bishop I said : " Bish- 
op Capers, I am not a member of this body, but I 
ask leave to say a few words just now." "Pro- 
ceed, Brother Fitzgerald," said the saintly and 
courtly man in the chair. "What I want to say is 
this : that the secretary of this Conference seems 
to have two sets of manners. To you, sir, and to 
the titled and more distinguished members of this 
bod}', he is polite almost to excess; but if he has 
once spoken kindl}^ to any of the younger men or 
the less notable older men of this Conference, I 
have not heard it. Look at Father Pitchford, who 
sits yonder in tears of humiliation : if he had been a 
dog, he could scarcely have been spoken to more 
scornfully." Just then I began to realize what I 
was doing under the impulse that had come upon 
me — the sort of impulse I always feel at any ex- 
hibition of arrogant officialism or tyranny of any 
sort. But a shower of "Amens " rose all around 
as I sat down with a flushed face and heart aflut- 
ter. 

The secretary rose to his fejet with a pale face 



Jiiitiatcd . 85 

and trembling voice. "Brethren," he said, "'is 
this that Brother Fitzgerald has said of me true?" 

"Yes," said the venerable Allen Turner; "yes, 
we have noticed it, and talked of it, and grieved 
over it." 

A number of assenting voices responded in dif- 
ferent parts of the Conference room. 

"As God is my judge," said the secretary with 
deep emotion, "as God is my judge, I did not 
know it. ]\ry natural manner is rather brusque or 
abrupt. To you, bishop, and to the older and 
more distinguished members of this Conference, 
to whom I have been accustomed to look up with 
reverence and admiration, my manner may have 
been more deferential than to other members of 
the Conference. But I love every member of this 
body: if there was any rudeness in my manner, it 
was not in my heart; and as to Father Pitchford, 
I feel as if I could go to where he sits, kneel at 
his feet, ask his forgiveness, and bathe his feet 
with my tears. And as to my young Brother Fitz- 
gerald," he continued with profound feeling, "I 
honor him for what he has done, and will always 
love him. He spoke out to my face in open Con- 
ference w^hat was in his heart, while my older 
brethren only censured me privately, never speak- 
ing to me of my fault." 

There was a true man! lie became from that 
day my devoted friend ; and the more fully I knew 
him, the more I admired and loved this able-bod- 
ied, warm-blooded, great-souled Georgia preacher. 
The moral of this incident, narrated with some 
hesitancy, is: First, that a good man may err un- 
consciously in his bearing; and, second, that crit- 
icisms behind his back are not likely to do him 
any good. It may be noted here that when I 
started to California Blakely Smith accompanied 



S6 Sunset J7ezus. 

me from Macon as far as Fort A^alley on a cold, 
frosty morning, saying: " I want to be the last 
Georgian that gives your hand a farewell shake." 
He has passed over into the world of spirits. If he 
were here on earth, his manly nature would un- 
derstand the motive that prompts me to recall this 
incident of the far-away past. 

Blessed be the memory of those old Georgia 
preachers I About the time I had gotten through 
my impulsive arraignment of the secretary, it oc- 
curred to me that I had committed ecclesiastical 
hara-kiri; that that company of venerable and holy 
men w^ould look upon me as a pert and pragmatic 
youth, unsuited to the solemn and delicate func- 
tions of the Christian ministry. But they took me 
to their hearts, and made me feel the glow of affec- 
tion which has not cooled to this hour. I was ad- 
mitted on trial wdth expressions of hearty good will 
that would have moved a colder man than I think 
m3'self to be. Dear old Georgia! my second 
mother on the religious side. May the God of our 
fathers smile on their children's children unto the 
latest generation ! 

Thus was I initiated. 



MY ENVIRONMENT,, 



MY ENVIRONMENT. 

I WAS iully initiLited into Church relationship 
in Georgia, and I shall always be thankful 
that it was where it was, when it was, and 
how it was that this came about. My en- 
vironment was favorable, and God was lead- 
ing me. Georgia Methodism w^as then very power- 
ful, a militant army accustomed to victory. Look 
for a moment at the men w^ho stood in her pulpits 
and served at her altars. The two Pierces — the 
father and son, "the old doctor" and the bishop 
— were then at the zenith of their power and pop- 
ularity. George F. Pierce was then the pulpit 
star of Georgia — an Apollo in physical beauty, a 
pulpit orator possessing every quality that excites 
the admiration and delight of listening multitudes, 
and, best of all, gifted wdth a spiritual insight that 
enabled him to flash into the hearts of sinners the 
search-light that made them see the exceeding sin- 
fulness of sin. Georgia was magnetized by this 
favorite son. His personality pervaded the state. 
The last declamation or pungent aphorism of 
"George Pierce," as he was fondly called to the 
last, was current coin in all circles of society in 
Georgia. That state is richer to-day because his 
genius was sanctified genius. This well-worn 
word is used thoughtfully in this connection : 

sanctified orenius is the hijihest human instrumen- 



tality that God uses to bless the world. The "old 
doctor," Lovick Pierce, the father, was not as 
'^flowery" or rhetorical or brilliantly declamatory 
as his son, but it w^as the undoubting belief of 
manv of the elder Georgians of that day that he 

(§9) 



90 Sunset J^iczvs. 

was the profoundest thinker and the ablest ex- 
pounder of the Scriptures then hving. He was 
truly a marvelous preacher — deeply spiritual, with 
a mighty sweep of thought and a vocabulary to 
match, with the unction of the Holy One that lit- 
erally made his face to shine. He delighted in the 
grandest themes, and his diction had the roll of 
evangelical thunder. The simple grandeur of 
his character had a charm for all sorts of peo- 
ple. The rudest rustic of the backwoods, the 
profoundest jurist, and the most learned scholar 
alike held him in reverent esteem. That mighty 
man of God, Samuel Anthon}- — "old Ironsides" 
he was fondly called by his admirers — was preach- 
ing sermons that stirred to the depths the con- 
sciences of entire communities. Single sermons 
by him almost wrought moral revolutions where 
they were preached. He did not fear the face of 
man, and shunned not to declare the whole coun- 
sel of God. His tall, gaunt, sinewy figure, his 
rugged features and severe simplicity of dress 
were in keeping with his character and his mes- 
sage. At times he rose to heights of almost super- 
natural grandeur of thought and expression, and 
at others he melted into a tenderness that was over- 
whelming. In the one mood he was an Elijah; in 
the other, a Jeremiah. My faith in God is stronger 
to this hour because I heard the sermons and 
prayers of this old Georgia hero-saint. And 
there was William M. Crumley, a wise and holy 
man, a spiritual battery always charged ; John 
W. Knight, an eccentric genius, who in one 
mood was ecstatic as an angel and in another 
wished he were *'a black cat"; Eustace W. 
Speer, whose short expositor}^ sermons sparkled 
with gems of wisdom and flashes of rhetorical 
beauty from the first sentence to the last; Ed- 



ward II. Myers, who had the gift of usefuhiess 
more than that of popularity, a schohir worthy 
of the name, a preacher who preferred to profit 
rather than merely to please his hearers, a teach- 
er who put conscience as well as capability into 
his work in the schoolroom; William Arnold — 
*' Uncle Billy,'" as he was famiharly called — who 
combined common sense and uncommon spiritual 
power in the pulpit and in the councils of the 
Church; Jesse Boring, a man of genius and a 
man of many tribulations, whose sermons at times 
reached the most startling and effective climaxes ; 
John M. Bonnell, whose saintliness and scholar- 
ship made him a sort of Georgia Melanchthon; 
John C. Simmons, sturdy as a Georgia oak, fer- 
vent as a tropical summer; Alexander Means, in 
whom pedagogy, poetry, and pulpit eloquence 
were delightfully blended; Augustus B. Long- 
street, best known as a humorist, but whose best 
work was done in the pulpit and in the classroom, 
whose influence impressed on the fleshly tablets of 
the hearts of his pupils will last when his *' Geor- 
gia Scenes" may be forgotten; John P. Duncan, 
a sunny-souled man, whose sweet spiritual songs 
helped to float many a penitent over the bars of 
unbelief into the still waters of peace; and then a 
lot of younger men, some of whom have since 
made their mark: John W. Burke, the friendli- 
est of the friendly, a lover of children and beloved 
by all; J. O. A. Clark, a thinker whose logic was 
tuned to love; J. W. Hinton, who hewed huge 
masses of truth out of the quarry of inspiration 
and built them into homiletic structures solid and 
stately; W. P. Harrison, a walking encyclopedia 
of religious knowledge, guileless as a child, wise 
with the wisdom that comes from above; Thomas 
F. Jordan, an eloquent man of sanguine temper. 



92 S II use/ Views. 

who kindled quickl}' and set his hearers aglow; 
George G. N. MacDonell, a crystal of Christian 
character without a flaw; Oliver P. Anthony, a 
kingly-looking man with soul to match, whose 
heart was as gentle as that of a w^oman, whose 
courage was that of a knighthood when knights 
were knights indeed; Robert W. Bigham, who 
on both sides of the continent has lived a life and 
preached a gospel that made many to see the beau- 
t}^ of divine truth and to follow Him w^ho is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life; W. H. Christian, 
who is a man with that gift of common sense which 
the Head of the Church is always ready to utilize 
for its edification; W. F. Glenn, an Israelite with- 
out guile, an editor w^hose work is pitched on the 
New Testament plane, a man whom it is impossi- 
ble not to love and to trust: these, and man}^ more 
not less worthy of mention, were then at w^ork as 
iNIethodist preachers in Georgia. 

For a special reason I mention one more name — 
that of William Davies, one of the young men who 
was then just starting in the ministry. He was a 
tall, handsome man, ruddy-faced, blue-eyed, grace- 
ful in every motion, and of presence magnetic. 
He came of a preaching family, but for a time he 
had been "wild." In one of the deep-reaching 
revivals that were prevalent in Georgia in that day 
he was powerfully converted — that is the old 
phrase; the initiated reader will understand it. 
He heard and obeyed a call to preach which im- 
mediately followed his conversion . ' ' Fitzgerald , ' ' 
he said to me one day, "I love God more than 
you can love him: he has done more for me than 
for anybody else on earth " — his eyes swimming in 
tears as he spoke. I have had the same feeling 
many times. Who that ever felt the joy of par- 
doned sin has not had it? Under the ministry 



M\ Euviroiiuiciit. 93 

of such men as these a Hving membership was 
brought in and built up in the Church — men Hke 
Matthew Rylander, whose prayers opened the 
gates of heaven and brought glor}- from the mercy- 
seat;' Ed. Sahsbury, whose songs had the touch 
that was sweeter than art could give, the touch of 
the live coal from off the altar; Thomas R. R. 
Cobb, a statesman who in public life exhibited 
the integrity and ability that befitted his sphere, a 
Methodist who in his private life united a humility 
that was most beautiful with a social glow that 
was irresistible; Walter T. Colquitt, politician 
and preacher, Methodist and Democrat, strangely 
mixed, a very brilliant man; Robert Toombs, 
whose Methodist wife, together with his friend- 
ship for George F. Pierce, brought him into close 
touch with Methodism. Pierce and Toombs — the 
bishop and the senator — were classmates at the 
Universit}" of Georgia and close friends all their 
lives. It is said that once in a confidential mood 
Toombs laid his hand on Pierce's knee, saying, 
" George, I want you to take me into the Church." 
" Wh}^ do you wish it? Are you ready to begin in 
earnest a Christian life?" asked the bishop. "No, 
George," replied Toombs, **I am not fit for mem- 
bership in the Cliurch. But I have a fear that I 
may die suddenly some day, and some fool might 
sav that I was a skeptic." From the United States 
Senator to the humblest walks in life Methodism 
in Georgia was regnant, touching all classes and 
making an atmosphere for its adherents warm with 
spiritual life. The class meeting was still a living 
institution of the Church in Georgia, in which its 
young life was watched over and developed in a 
way that promoted stability and growth. I was 
enrolled at once as a member of a class — the one 
led by Robert A. Smith, of whom I have spoken 



p4 Sunset Viezvs, 

elsewhere, and whose name, as my eye falls upon 
it on this page, makes me feel like saying: My 
God, I thank thee that there is such a thing in this 
earthly life as Christian friendship, and for the 
hope that it will be renewed and perfected and 
perpetuated in the unending years that aw^ait us in 
the world of spirits. 



MY FIRST SERMON. 



MY FIRST SERMON. 

IT must have been foreordained that I was to 
be a preacher of the gospel. A sort of pre- 
sentiment that it was to be so had been with me 
from my early boyhood. It was in Doctor 
Penn's prayer at my baptism at two days old. 
It was the wish and the expectation of my mother. 
It was like a prophetic undertone through all my 
previous life. My Methodist brethren and other 
Christian friends now seemed to expect it. Three 
things entered into my call to preach, as it seemed 
to me then and as it seems to me now — the mov- 
ing of the Holy Spirit, the consensus of the 
Church, and God's providential leadings. I was 
first licensed to exhort — a function now almost 
disused, but once greatly magnified among Meth- 
odists. Some of these exhorters preached well: 
some preachers only exhorted w^arml}-. Exhorta- 
tion ought to be a part of most sermons. Not 
every zealous young man waited for official license 
in those days, for the Methodists of the time had 
felt, believed, and hoped for what was worth tell- 
ing. They had liberty. The class meeting was 
a school of the prophets in a gracious sense. The 
leaders were not always learned in literature, sci- 
ence, philosophy, or art, but as a rule they were 
wise in things pertaining to practical religion. 
They knew the Bible, they knew Jesus as a Sav- 
iour, they knew human nature, they knew human 
life, and the}' gave to many young men the first 
impetus toward the pulpit. Taking a portion of 
Scripture, I began to expound and exhort. The 
exposition was doubtless most elementary in its 
7 (97) 



98 Su/iscf Viczus. 

quality, and the exhorting was what might be ex- 
pected from a young exhorter whose chief tenet 
and profoundest feehng were that Jesus Christ was 
the Saviour of sinners in the present tense. 

My first sermon W'as preached in a Presbyterian 
church. It happened thus: I was on a visit to m}^ 
kindred in North Carohna. On a bright Sunday 
morning I had driven with my sister Martha over 
to the old Bethesda Presbyterian church, near the 
line between Caswell and Rockingham counties, 
with the expectation of hearing the Rev. Dr. J. G. 
Doll, a distinguished preacher of that denomina- 
tion. On our arrival I saw that the grove around 
the old country church was crow^ded with horses 
and vehicles of all sorts, from the stylish family 
carriages of the rural " quality" down to the most 
primitive carryalls and lean-bodied nags of the 
poorer sort. As I drove up to the edge of the 
grove that songful old saint and elder, Uncle John- 
ny Jones, who seemed to be watching for me, 
came up, took my horse's bridle, fastened him to 
a swinging limb of an oak, and after helping my 
sister to alight took me aside. 

"Oscar," he said very solemnly, "you must 
preach here to-day." 

"Uncle Johnny, I am not a preacher," I an- 
swered, flushing with a peculiar feeling that came 
over me. 

"You have been holding meetings, haven't 
you? " he asked. 

"Yes, but only prayer meetings among our 
Methodist people: I have no license to preach," I 
answered. 

"Oscar, you must preach here to-day!" said 
the venerable man with deep solemnity. "A note 
from Dr. Doll tells me that he was seized with 
sudden sickness and is at Yanceyville in bed, un- 



J/r J^y/'s/ Sermon. 99 

able to ^Qt here. You see what a trreat crowd of 
people have come out to hear him, some of them 
living ten miles or more away. There will be a 
great disappointment if we have no preaching, and 
harm will result to the cause of religion. Oscar, 
you uiiist preach ! " 

A struggle had been going on within me while 
the good old man was speaking. I felt that the 
hour had come for the decision of a momentous 
question. I said: 

"Go into the pulpit with me, conduct the pre- 
liminary exercises, and then I will do whatever I 
feel I ought to do." 

"All right," he said cheerfully. 

As I walked down the aisle of the church, it 
seemed to me almost that it was a league in length ; 
and as I sat in the pulpit and glanced at that wait- 
ing congregation, the faces seemed to multiply 
themselves indefinitely. It was a clear case of 
pulpit scare. The dear old elder was a sweet 
singer and gifted in prayer. When he had fin- 
ished I had a text ready, and a full heart. The 
text was Jeremiah xii. 5 : "If thou hast run with the 
footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how 
canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land 
of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied 
thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jor- 
dan?" That sermon will not here be given even 
in outline — if outline it had. But if ever I have 
had "liberty" in preaching, I had it that day. 
Many of my old schoolmates and early friends 
were in the congregation, curiosity and sympathy 
mingling in their consciousness. A great tide of 
feeling swelled up from the depths of my heart 
and overflowed all. We all wept together. The 
old elder praised God, and old Bethesda was 
aglow. I had my license to preach: surely the 



lOO Sinisct T^tczvs. 

Lord had settled for me the question of my voca- 
tion. His Church had already been drawing me 
the same way. The Church and its Head draw 
the willing soul in the same direction when the 
Holy Spirit has control. Dr. Doll came up the 
next day: special services were begun, and many 
souls were brought to Christ. Surely the Lord 
has his own best way of working. My life-work 
was found, and my soul was flooded wdth a peace 
that was the peace of God. 



PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 



PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 

ON my return to Georgia I received a local 
preacher's license in the city of Macon. 
Shortly thereafter Dr. Mason, who had 
charge of the negro Methodist congre- 
gation, died, and I was put in charge of 
it. I have a lively and grateful recollection of 
'this experience. Those black Methodists were 
numerous, responsive, musical, and demonstrative 
to a degree that was astonishing to uninitiated vis- 
itors. They gave me their hearts and helped me 
much in many ways. My first Sunday with them 
w^as memorable for the prayer that followed my 
attempt to preach. I had called on Abram Mc- 
Gregor, the patriarch of the flock — a tall, black 
man, w^ith high cheek bones, a face w^iose lines 
w^ere all strong and good, and a soul that loved 
God and feared nothing but sin. By virtue of his 
strength of character and deep piety he was a sort 
of patriarch and untitled king among his people. 
He prayed at my request: *'0 Lord, we thank 
thee for de gospel which has been dispensed wid 
on dis occasion, and which de people have listened 
to wdd so much patience. Bless our young broth- 
er wnd a big heart and a weak voice " — and so on. 
I have never heard a more honest prayer, and in 
some of his verbal lapses the old man spoke wiser 
than he knew. 

My predecessor, Dr. Mason, was a high-met- 
tled Christian scholar and teacher, spontaneous 
and trenchant — a man of w^ork. He spoke his 
own thoughts in his own way. He was one of 
manv men of large ability and deep piety who gave 

(103) 



I04 Sioisct Viczus. 

their service to the negroes in those days, helping 
to prepare them for the tremendous changes that 
were swiftly coming. The colored Methodists of 
the South had as good preaching as the white 
ones before the war between the states. In fact, 
as a rule they had the same preachers. If now 
and then a weak or doubtful young brother was 
sent to a colored charge as an experiment, the 
same thing was done with white charges. It 
is a blessed thing that slavery is gone. It is 
also a blessed thing that before their emancipation 
through the zealous ministry of the several Chris- 
tian denominations in the South — the Methodists 
not the least — the negroes of that section had at- 
tained the rudiments of Christian civilization suffi- 
ciently to make the transition both- desirable and 
safe. The world's equitable second thought is al- 
ready beginning to see this. The Christian peo- 
ple of the South did well for the negroes, all 
things considered, under the old regime. But 
their work for them is not all done. They have a 
duty to perform in the present tense — the duty of 
giving them the gospel in its fullness of power and 
plenitude of blessing. In discharging this duty 
they will at the same time conserve their own 
highest interest and the welfare of the colored 
millions dwelling in their midst. I am at the date of 
this w^-iting (February 3, 1898) still glad to lend a 
helping hand to this work in behalf of the negro 
race, and there is surely an open door. This 
seems to me a good place to say: The opportuni- 
ty waited for does not come ; the good work you 
can do comes to you when you are ready for duty. 



SENT TO SAVANNAH. 



SENT TO SAVANNAH. 

I WAS "read out" to Andrew Chapel, city of 
Savannah, junior preacher, with Wilham M. 
Crumley as my senior. The ride on the rail- 
road from Macon to Savannah was memora- 
ble to me. I was quite a young man, and that 
day felt that I was even younger than I looked. The 
question came into my mind : What will the Savan- 
nah Methodists think when they see me? Will 
they not ask themselves. What was Bishop Ca- 
pers thinking of when he appointed such a boy to 
preach in such a city as Savannah? The tempter 
rode with me all the way — making, as it now seems 
to me, a final and desperate assault'on my faith and 
courage as a minister of the gospel. I pictured to 
myself the astonishment and disappointment of the 
good people when they saw how raw a youth had 
been sent to them clothed with pastoral author- 
ity. The suggestion presented itself: Why not flee 
from such a trial? Why not go to one of the ho- 
tels, on your arrival at Savannah, spend the night, 
and on the morrow take passage on a steamer to 
New York? The difliculties, humiliations, and 
trials of the position assigned me presented them- 
selves to my mind most vividly and persistently as 
I swept along on the cars. If a personal devil ever 
assaulted a young preacher, he assaulted me then 
and there. I had sinister companionship that was 
invisible, but not unfelt, riding through Georgia 
that day of trial. While thus agitated by conflict- 
ing feelings and distressful thoughts, the train 
rolled into the station — lo, we were at Savannah ! 
Before I had time even to look at my hand-bag- 

(107) 



io8 Sunset P7( 



lezus. 



gage, several kindly-looking gentlemen came walk- 
ing through the cars with inquiring faces. One 
of them paused as he looked at me, and said: 

"We are looking for Brother Fitzgerald, the 
young preacher who has been appointed to Sa- 
vannah — do you know whether he is aboard the 
train?" 

With a sort of dazed feeling I told them that I 
was the man, and almost before I knew it they 
had me and my baggage in a carriage whirling 
rapidly along the streets. The carriage halted, 
and one of the brethren said: 

"Brother Fitzgerald, here we are at Brother 
Stone's, where you are to stop." 

A motherly-looking lady met me in the hall, and 
after a very kindly greeting said: "Come with 
me, and I will show you your room." Leading me 
upstairs, I was shown into an elegantly furnished 
apartment. "This is your home," said the good 
lady; "here you will stay while you live in Savan- 
nah. Come down now and get some supper," 
she added cheerily, leading the way into the din- 
ing room, where a nice hot meal was waiting. 

It was all like a dream. In spite of my previous 
misgivings and depression, I actually began to feel 
comfortable. The mother-touch had reached me. 
Blessed be God for the women who have that 
touch ! Without them how much darker and cold- 
er would be this world into which so much of 
trouble and pain has somehow found entrance ! 
Whoso hath felt true mother-love finds it easy to 
believe in God's love. Among the memories of 
my life that will not fade is that of this Savan- 
nah couple — Marshal Stone and his wife. He, 
the former city marshal, was as soldier-like in 
character as Andrew Jackson, whom he greatly 
resembled in personal appearance. A tall, grave- 



Soif io Saz'inimiJi. 109 

faced man, with thin lips and lirm-set features, he 
could have been stern in his looks but for a serene 
benignity that made you feel that he was a strong 
man to trust rather than a strong man to fear. 
That w^as Marshal Stone — a man who hated all 
that w^as mean and loved everybody. His wife 
was the most spontaneous, irrepressible, quaint, 
outspoken, witty, and practical of uncanonized 
saints. She said the queerest and. did the kind- 
est things all the time. Even in her most sol- 
emn religious moods and acts there was often a 
touch of humor; her most humorous sayings and 
doings had often a tender or solemn side that gave 
her acquaintances many a surprise. Her descrip- 
tive powers were such that her narratives and dia- 
logues were almost as vivid as life itself. This 
couple had no children of their own, and having 
ample means at their command they were the ben- 
efactors of every good cause and the helpers of all 
w^ho needed help in Savannah. They belonged 
to the Methodist Church, and gave it love, la- 
bor, and money without stint. I linger on their 
names, with a tenderness in my heart — as well I 
may. They gave me my first preacher-home, and 
with a grace and heartiness all their own provid- 
ed for all my wants, without money and without 
price. "This is your home," she said to me on 
the night of my arrival — and she made it so in the 
fullest sense of the w^ord. When I meet them in 
the home of the soul — this is my undoubting hope 
now^ — that home will be more a home to me be- 
cause I shall see their kindly faces and hear their 
kindly voices. Many traveling preachers w^hose 
eyes may fall on these lines will echo the prayer: 
Father in heaven, give thy special grace and 
abounding mercy unto these children of thine 
who give homes to thy ministering servants ; grant 



no Sfn/sr/ J^iezus. 

that their dwelHngs here may be blessed with thy 
continual benediction, and that they may reach 
that home above where the famil}^ of God shall 
live together with him in whose presence there is 
fullness of joy, and at whose right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore. Amen. 



SAVANNAH.! 



SAVANNAH. 

THE Savannah of 1S54 was unique in its 
blending of simplicity and repose with a 
polish and sparkle in its social life that 
gave its old denizens the undoubting con- 
viction that it was the best place on earth, 
and made it easy for a new-comer to fall in love 
with the place. The old Southern tone was dom- 
inant, but there was an infusion of Northerners 
sufficient to ffive somewhat of the briskness and 
breeziness that are found wherever Yankees are 
found in all latitudes of earth. The rule in that 
day w^as, that the Yankee who came South to stay 
did so because he had an affinit}^ for the people 
and fondness for the climate. What fire-eaters 
were many of them in politics ! What sticklers for 
** strict construction," and all that sort of thing! 
The peripatetic Northern travelers who came on a 
visit to make trade, or for professional letter-writ- 
ing for the newspapers, were of different types, 
and had a different standing. Believing that these 
visitors were looking for the seamy side of South- 
ern society, that was the side shown to them. "I 
am a truer Southerner than you are," once said a 
lawyer from Connecticut to me ; *' you are a South- 
ern man by birth, I by choice." The rule worked 
both ways : there were Southern-born men that ex- 
hibited every peculiarity that made the word "Yan- 
kee " synonymous with everything that a brave, 
generous soul dislikes. Sectionalism was then ab- 
surd, unjust, and hurtful, disgusting in its grosser 
forms. Neither the North nor the South had a 
monopoly of that or of any other silliness or mean- 
S ("3) 



114 Sunset jyezfs. 

ness. When the war between the states came, 
these Northern-born Southerners were among the 
first to go to the front, and they spilled their blood 
freely for the cause of the South. Abraham Lin- 
coln and George H. Thomas were both Southern- 
born men who are canonized as political saints in 
the calendar of the North. Admiral Farragut 
was also a Southerner by birth. The accident of 
birth means nothing as to ingrain quality. The 
sectionalist in the broad, vulgar sense of the word 
has been a nuisance in both sections of our coun- 
try. He may be tracked by the marks of blood 
and fire. A sectionalist in this evil and narrow 
sense of the word is an anachronism in these 
United States in this year of our Lord 1898. He 
is lonesome, and soliloquizes mostly w^hen he says 
anything in his own bad way. 

But I am digressing, and will come back to Sa- 
vannah, ante bcllmn. Dreamy, delightful, seduc- 
tive old Savannah ! I have not seen it for more 
than forty years, but the memory of it is fresh and 
sweet and sacred. If I were a poet, I would put 
its Bonaventure Cemetery into verse. It is itself 
a poem. There is nothing just like it elsewhere: 
the live-oak avenues, draped with the long sea- 
moss, gently stirred by the soft breeze; a sk}^ that 
bends in deepest blue above, with no sound to 
break the stillness save the faint note of a song 
bird in the minor key, or the w^hisper of a breeze 
like *'the sighing of broken reeds" that sym- 
bolizes that of breaking hearts. Sidney Lanier 
might have sung the song of Bonaventure had he 
seen it as I have seen it. The elegance of the cit}^ 
and the heartiness of the country met you in the old 
Savannah in a way that gave you wonder and de- 
light. The gentlemen of the old school were so 
gentlemanl}^ in their own lofty, easy-going way; 



Saz'cDDiah. 115 

the women of the old school were so ladylike in 
their own gracious, queenly way; the tradesmen 
were so urbane and so neighborly, rather than sharp 
and shoplike; the old negroes were so grand, and 
the young negroes were so jolly, in the old Savan- 
nah, that whoso once tasted the flavor of its life 
never lost its charm. And its religious life was of 
a type all its own. The Baptists were numerous 
and zealous, both among the white people and the 
negroes. The negro Baptists were led by Andrew 
Marshall, a black apostle whose word was law 
amon^ them, and whose life was patterned after 
that of his Lord. The Roman Catholics w^ere Ro- 
manists naturalized, liberalized, and largely evan- 
gelized by their Georgia environment. The Pres- 
b3'terians were as solid as if molded in Geneva, 
and as sunny as a Georgia landscape in a clear Oc- 
tober day. The Episcopalians were a people who 
had scholars in their pulpits ; whose high-churchism 
w^as not nois}'; whose traditions were comforting 
to themselves, but not obtrusive; whose social life 
w^as for the most part very sweet. Their Bishop 
Elliott was a colossal and aesthetic giant, gor- 
geous-looking in his episcopal robes ; a man who 
knew botany and theology, who held to the tactual 
succession in the ministry, and was a judge of good 
painting and good eating. And the Methodists — 
the stirring, wide-awake, militant, moving, musical 
Methodists of Savannah — they went everywhere, 
and had a hand in everything good that was go- 
ing on, now and then making a tangent under a 
sudden impulse or inspiration. The presiding 
elder w^as John W. Glenn, who personally looked 
like the pictures of Martin Luther — sturdy, thick- 
set, heavy-jawed, large-brained, firm of lip, wdth a 
gleam in his eye that was martial or tender as oc- 
casion demanded. I have seen him walk the floor 



ii6 Sujisct Views. 

like a caged lion, chafing over follies that he saw 
but could not abate in ecclesiastical administra- 
tion; again, I have seen him the center of a social 
circle where good fellowship reached the high- 
water mark; and again, and yet again, I have seen 
him in the pulpit, the incarnation of ministerial fidel- 
ity, pleading with sinners with melting tenderness, 
expostulating with backsliders with awful earnest- 
ness, or calling believers up to the heights of ho- 
liness where the sun shines night and day. He 
knew the blessed paradox expressed in that last 
clause of the foregoing sentence — in the night of 
sorrow and pain as in the sunshine of gladness 
alike, he walked in the light of the Lord. And m}^ 
senior was William M. Crumley, a low- voiced, 
slow-moving, magnetic man, whose persuasions 
brought multitudes of souls to the pitying Christ, 
whose prayers at the bedside of the sick and in the 
chambers death-darkened made a channel for the 
stream of heavenly peace and comfort to souls that 
were burdened and hearts that were broken. Dur- 
ing the epidemic visitation of yellow fever — that 
oft-recurring scourge of scourges of our South x\t- 
lantic seaports — sectarian lines were obliterated: 
Crumley, who stayed at his post of duty, was the 
pastor of all classes, rich and poor alike ; and when 
it was over, his name was tenderl}- spoken by thou- 
sands in the homes of the smitten city. The Chris- 
tian heroism developed during these awful visita- 
tions illustrates a compensatory law of God : they 
leave the stricken communities sorrowful and pov- 
erty-smitten, but richer in all that is precious in 
Christian civilization and ennobling in human 
character. 



TO CALIFORNIA. 



TO CALIFORNIA. 

FROM Savannah I was called to go to Cali- 
fornia by the fatherly and apostolic Bishop 
James O. Andrew. That such a man as 
he should become the center of a fierce 
sectional struggle, is one of the strange 
things that now and then take place in this strange 
world. I will -not ev^en briefly rehearse that story 
here. We have already had too much of it. Let 
us not dig up an}- buried quarrels, but rather scat- 
ter every seed of love that we can gather from the 
past. The dear old bishop made the call, and I 
obeyed. My sturdy and strong-willed presiding 
elder, John W. Glenn, in what he felt to be right- 
eous wrath, paced the floor and stormed against 
my going. But I went under a strong persuasion 
of duty. Savannah gave me a motherly fare- 
well. My pen lingers on the page as the image of 
one woman comes up before my mind — that of 
Mrs. Marshal Stone, who had given me a home 
and almost a mother's love. Her thoughtfulness 
in my behalf blessed every step of the journey and 
made itself felt long afterwards. It wasofthe sort 
that forgets nothing and grudges nothingin doing a 
kindness. I started on my journey with her kiss 
and her tears upon my face. And what a journey 
it was ! Its first episode was one never to be for- 
gotten — one to be thankful for forever. At Enon, 
Alabama, a quiet little village on Chunnenuggee 
Ridge among the pines, I took a companion for 
my California trip, and for life — and she has been 
my good angel from that hour to this. We started 
five minutes after the ceremony that united our 

(>i9) 



I20 Sicnsct Vtezus. 

lives. She sits on my left, sewing, as I write this 
by lamplight on the evening of March 23, 1898 — 
God bless her ! 

At New Orleans we spent a few days, includ- 
ing a Sunday. It was then a gay metropolis, 
Frenchy in its glitter, Southern in its glow. Its 
brunette beauties shaded off into octoroons with 
rounded forms and laughing faces, deepening 
into the honest, solid blackness of the genuine 
negroes, who kept in Louisiana the complex- 
ion and the jollity they brought with them from 
the Congo. It was a jolly city in that day, unlike 
any other American city. The Picayune of that 
date was one of the unique newspapers that had a 
flavor and a field all its owm, wdth a touch of indig- 
enous literature in its columns and a bonhomie 
that gave it a national good will. Sunday was 
mostly a French Sunday — thatis to say, it had much 
frolic and some religious worship. Here I met for 
the first time McTyeire and Keener, afterwards 
made bishops. McTyeire was editing the JVew 
Orleans Christian Advocate, and winning his spurs 
as a thinker,' writer, and leader in the Church. 
The questions he asked me, and the things he said 
to me, went straight to the mark, and made me 
feel that I had met a man who was a mind-reader, 
and who knew all that was going on. Keener 
was a presiding elder, whose quaintly classic and 
incisive sayings and heroic methods w^ere much 
talked of even then. '* Yes, he's a Keener, sure 
enough !" said an admirer, with a chuckle, quoting 
one of his sharp sayings. These two men strong- 
ly impressed the young preacher who has always 
found a fascination in the study of men. To this 
day I have not forgotten the preaching of Dr. J. 
B. Walker at the Carondelet Methodist Church 
on Sunday. A small, w^ell-knit, dark-skinned, 



To Califoniia. I2i 

black-haired, heavy-whiskered man, witli briUiant 
black eyes, with a fluency that was almost miracu- 
lous in its rapidity, with a rhetoric that was ring- 
ing" and an enunciation that was as clear as it was 
quick, he preached for about thirty minutes — it 
seemed less to me — and quit when in full motion, 
leaving, as it seemed to me, everybody wishing he 
would <ro on. A Gulf breeze was not fresher than 
his thought; his manner was as graceful as the 
movement of a clipper-ship under full sail. Years 
afterwards I made an earnest effort to bring Dr. 
Walker to San Francisco, believing that if any 
man could get a hearing for Southern Methodism 
in that city, he was the man. But who knows? He 
might have met there his pulpit Waterloo, as not 
a few other notabilities have done in that city, w^hich 
has its own climate and its own w^ay of think- 
ing, speaking, and doing on all Hnes of thought, 
speech, and action. 

Linus Parker was then a young preacher in 
New^ Orleans, and had begun to attract atten- 
tion and admiration by writing articles for the 
press that were out of the usual style — original 
in thought, with subtle touches of insight and 
flashes of beauty that made the reader stop, re- 
read, and linger with delight over his charming 
page. He was elected to the office of bishop in 
1882. Overwhelmed with the weight of the re- 
sponsibility thus incurred, he grasped my hand 
with tears in his eyes, and said: "My brethren 
have made a mistake ; I am not suited to the 
place." Sweet-souled, flnely-tuned Linus Par- 
ker! His humility w^as equal to his genius. His 
course as a bishop of the Church was quickly 
run. As ointment poured forth is his name. 

A lively time we had in Nicaragua, en route to 
California. It was just after Walker's first filibus- 



122 Su}iset jyczus. 

ter raid. The Nicaraguans naturally regarded all 
North Americans with suspicion and dislike. They 
were sulky, and we were watchful. At the " Half- 
way House," between the head of the lake and 
San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast side, we had 
a night adventure that was somewhat exciting. 
About six hundred native Nicaraguan soldiers had 
gathered there to meet Filibuster Walker, should 
he come again. There w^ere about ninety of us 
North Americans. An enterprising agent of the 
evil one had opened a bar for the sale of liquor 
in a thatched shanty near by. Men of both 
parties drank freely. A half-drunken Ameri- 
can and a half-drunken "Greaser" came to 
high words, and at length our man slapped the 
face of the other, with an oath. Instantly there 
was a clamor in angry, broken Spanish, as the 
Nicaraguans leveled their six hundred muskets at 
us. Almost as quickly, our men drew their re- 
volvers, and stood ready. It promised to be a 
lively and not altogether unequal fight — six hun- 
dred tawny natives armed with old flintlock mus- 
kets, on the one side, and ninety North Americans 
armed with their deadly quick-shooting revolvers; 
on the other. It was a critical situation — the pull- 
ing of a single trigger on either side would have 
made bloody work. I was in the front of our par- 
ty, mounted on a mule, unarmed, perfectly sober, 
but somewhat anxious. The women of our party 
were seated in wagons, the rest of our men, like 
myself, being mounted on mules ready to start. 
Acting upon an impulse, advancing a few steps to 
get in sight and hearing of both parties, I lifted 
my hat and said: 

" Gentlemen, I have w^itnessed this whole diffi- 
culty from the first. This fellow" — pointing as I 
spoke to the man who had assaulted the Nicaraguan 



To Califo niiii. 123 

— "is mostlv bhimable for all the trouble. lie is 
the aggressor, and is a disgrace to the American 
name." 

• x\mid approving grunts from the Nicaraguans 
our half-drunken American began an interruption, 
when a tall Penns3'lvanian of our party, who spoke 
Spanish and had acted as my interpreter, turned 
quickly upon him and, placing the muzzle of his 
revolver within an inch or so of his head, said 
sternl}" : 

*' Hush, you scoundrel! If you speak another 
word, I will blow your head off." 

The ruflian did not speak again ; he saw the 
flash in the tall Penns^dvanian's eye and caught 
the ring of decision in his voice. (When I put in 
this parenthesis the statement that this Pennsyl- 
vanian was Captain James McLean, many old Cali- 
fornians will recognize him as the popular "Jim" 
McLean who was so well known in the southern 
mines — as brave a man as ever wore a soldier's 
uniform. He had won distinction and his title in 
the Mexican war. ) 

Seeing my opportunity, I said: " Gentlemen, 
let this fellow stay here and drink and quarrel and 
fight if he wishes to do so, but let us go on our 
journey, and take care of these women who are un- 
der our protection. All in favor of so doing say, 
Aye." 

Every man save one shouted, "Aye!" The 
right chord had been struck — no American wor- 
thy of the name ever fails to respond when ap- 
pealed to in behalf of woman. We are a gallant 
people, though not always entirely consistent in 
dealing with women and the woman question — 
so called. There is not much of a "question" 
about it where the Bible and a true manhood, 
rather than whisky and infidelity, decide. 



124 



Sunset Viczvs, 



"All right, here we go!" I shouted, putting 
the spur to my little mule ; and away we went un- 
der the tropical stars, our men giving "Three 
cheers for the w^omen ! " as we started. It was 
an exhilarating gallop of fourteen miles ; and w^hen 
the steamer's lights at San Juan del Sur came in 
sight, how we shouted ! That was my first glance 
at the world's great ocean — the Pacific, so called 
— and it was a glad sight as matters stood with us 
that night. 



ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 



ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 

ON the Pacific side — so this chapter is 
headed. But it was a misnomer as we 
found it. In the Gulf of Tehuantepec 
the storm on the sea was startling to a 
landsman ; even the oldest sailors looked 
anxious as the stanch ship rolled and tossed on the 
billows, the wind blowing a heavier gale than I 
had ever seen before. One of the sailors — a ro- 
bust, friendly-faced Irishman — gave me a piece of 
wisdom that I have not forgotten. Meeting him 
on the guards of the vessel about twilight, the sea 
rolling heavily, the wind whistling, and the ship 
pitching fearfully, I asked him : 

"What sort of weather will we have to-night?" 
"I'll tell you in the morning," he answered, 
looking at the sky, his eye twinkling as he spoke. 
He was an old sailor. He had learned the lesson 
that comes to most men who live loner in this world 
— this lesson, namely, that it is safer to prophesy 
after, rather than before, the event. A hasty or 
passionate prediction commits him who makes it 
to an irrational and obstinate effort to bring the 
thing to pass. The storms of life cannot be pre- 
dicted in advance ; the mystery of life cannot be 
understood now. We will be told in the morn- 
ing. . That glad morning will come — the morning 
that will be followed by no night of darkness and 
storm. For it we must wait. For it we can wait 
without mistrust or impatience, knowing that in 
every crisis we may look for the One mighty to 
save to come to us walking upon the sea. No 
night is too dark, no sea too rough, to keep him 
from coming when we need his help and comfort. 

(127) 



128 S ID/ set jyCZi 



VS. 



On the Pacific side, did I say? Those early 
years of California history had in them but little 
that was pacific. What a transition for me from 
Georgia to California, from dreamy, even-going 
old Savannah to the newness and rush and roar 
of San Francisco ! The first thing that impressed 
me was that everything and ever^^body seemed to 
be unsettled. The spirit of 1849 was still in the 
air in 1855. Each person seemed to be ready for 
'•a strike" of some sort — to make a strike, or to 
be struck. Scarcely any one seemed to have any 
fixed plans or expectations. The pulse of Cali- 
fornia beat fast and strong, but irregularly. It all 
seemed very strange to me, and it had a sort of 
charm that was indefinable. There was a morbid 
element in that early life in California, and it in- 
duced habits of thought and action that became 
chronic with many. Once a Calif ornian, always 
a Californian, in this sense. The gambling ele- 
ment — the disposition to take chances for the big 
things and the little things that were to be gained 
or lost in the turn of life's wheel of fortune — was 
evervwhere pervasive. 

Bishop Andrew presided at the session of the 
Pacific Conference held at Sacramento City, April, 
1855. That fatherly and apostolic saint had an 
heroic vein that ran all throuo^h him. When told 
that there was an impression prevailing in some 
quarters that his mission to California was to wind 
up the Southern Methodist Conference and aban- 
don that field, he said, *'If that is what is want- 
ed, they sent the wrong man" ; and as he said it 
there was a compression of the lips and a flash in 
his eye that bespoke a true chief of the militant 
Church. Martyr metal was in him: for a princi- 
ple he would have died as a matter of course with- 
out flourish and without fear. He was not in the 



0)1 tJic Pacifc Side. 129 

least melodriimatic. His wife was with him — and 
the echoes of her voice are still heard and the fra- 
grance of her presence still lingers there. Her 
face was an evangel. She was the Methodist Ma- 
donna while she was among the Californians. A 
woman came to see her one day w^hile she and the 
bisliop were with us in Sonora, the mining town 
where I did my first preaching in California. This 
woman had a history; she had then two husbands 
living in the same town, and a third elsewhere. 
She was passionate, impulsive, fierce in one mood, 
and pitiful and generous almost beyond belief in an- 
other. She came to brinof some little token of fjood 
w^ill to the parsonage — if that one-roomed board 
shanty on the steep red hillside may be so called — 
and there she met and was introduced to our Ma- 
donna. Lingering, she sat and gazed upon the face 
so restful and benignant, so gentle and so holy in 
its expression — and suddenly, wdth a gush of irre- 
pressible emotion, she rushed across the room, 
dropped on her knees, hid her face in her lap, and 
sobbed, "Mother!" This woman had been a 
sinner and had been much sinned against, and 
doubtless had longed for the mother-love w^hich is 
so like the love of God. If that woman w^as not 
converted by that look, she was comforted, and 
must have had at least a momentary glimpse of 
that love divine which is the fountain of all the 
true love that blesses this world. 

My first two years in California were spent in 
the Southern Mines, Sonora being my station — 
with Shaw's Flat, Columbia, Brown's Flat, Whis- 
ky Hill, Yankee Jim's, Mormon Creek, Chinese 
Camp, Jamestown, Poverty Flat, Woods's Creek, 
Jackass Gulch, and some other minor mining 
camp, as my parish. Gold dust, w^hisky, gam- 
bling, fighting, shooting, and other things of the 
9 



136 Sunset Viezus, 

sort, made life lively. The first four funerals that 
I attended told the story of life at the time in the 
mines of California — two of them were suicides, 
and the other two had been murdered. " Bang! 
bang! bang!" we would hear the rapid succes- 
sion of pistol shots in the Long Tom saloon in the 
dead of the night. '* Somebody is killed," we 
thought, or said; and the next morning I would 
be called on to perform the funeral rites of the 
Church over the dead body of some poor fellow 
who had been shot down in that far-famed resort. 
It was run by old Ben Aspinwall — a huge-framed, 
adipose giant, who regarded such tragedies as a 
matter of course; who never became excited, tak- 
ing things as they came; a strange old sinner, who 
would take the last dollar from a miner who bet 
against his faro-bank and as readily count out his 
twenty-dollar gold pieces to help in burying the 
dead or in charity to the living. I mention his 
name here with only a kindly feeling: the old gam- 
bler has for many long years been in some other 
world than this; this posthumous mention will do 
him no hurt. He was a typical man of his class, 
only bigger in body, of steadier nerve, and freer 
of hand than others. All my life I have heard of 
the proverbial generosity of professional gamblers. 
Is it true that they are notable for their generosity ? 
And if so, what is the secret of it? The old 
proverb, " Come easy, go easy," might explain 
it to some minds. But it occurs to me that the ex- 
planation may be found in the devil's casuistry 
suggested to a gambler's soul that if he will divide 
what he wrongfully takes from one man with an- 
other man who is needy, he will thus condone for 
his sin, and get a credit mark in his book of life 
which must be balanced at last. The devil always 
has a lie ready for all who will listen to him. 



Oil the Pacific Side, 131 

The life of California at that day was mostly 
young life. Young men ruled and rioted after 
their fashion. They were strong, passionate, 
credulous. Their sins were the sins of inexperi- 
ence and passion in a new country. Their virtues 
were courage and hopefulness. They feared not 
God, man, or devil. They persuaded themselves 
that they were the starters of a new era of some 
sort in their new western world. They scoffed 
at the wisdom of the past, invented a slang all their 
own, and extemporized a moral code for them- 
selves, conspicuously slighting several of the ten 
commandments. They struck out at a wild pace 
for an unknown goal. Mark Twain and Bret 
Ilarte have painted them to the life as far as they 
went. The names of the public men of California 
who died by the bullet or the bottle would make a 
long roll; but I would not, if I could, call these 
men back from the mystery and sanctity of death. 
The splendid manhood thus eclipsed makes as sad 
a chapter in real life as has been enacted on this 
planet. 



CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND IT. 



CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND VV. 

THE Spaniards and the Roman Catholics 
had long held possession of California; but 
manifest destiny was against their owner- 
ship and rulership. Republicanism and 
Protestantism were bound to supplant and 
succeed Imperialism and Romanism in Califor- 
nia. That Romanism was a singular compound of 
strength and weakness. It was saintly and sinful. 
It was heroic, and it was evasive and illusive. 
Grand religious ideals and shameful worldly pol- 
icies were blended in a way that excited mingled 
admiration and execration in ingenuous souls. The 
heroic and the saintly age of Spanish evangelization 
and conquest has registered itself in th-e very no- 
menclature of California, from San Francisco Bay 
to San Diego. What a saintly country in name! 
But what a devilish histor^M It is a mixture, and 
an evil mixture — the Church and the State. The 
kinp-dom of heaven and the kinjrdom of this world 
— God and mammon — left their marks. The Jes- 
uit fathers were of two sorts — the devotees who be- 
lieved with all their hearts, and the diplomats who 
schemed with all their cunning; the propagandists 
of the faith, and the tools of the Spanish political 
conquest. The writer who ignores the one or the 
otlier of these elements, in his estimates of the 
forces that operated in the Spanish settlements of 
America, will give a narrow, one-sided, and mis- 
leading statement. 

The *' Society of Jesus" on its religious side 
exhibited much that was worthy of its name — self- 
sacriiice, courage, consecration, enthusiasm, that 
dared danger and death for lo\'e of their Lord and 
love of souls. On its other and darker side, its 

('35) 



136 SiDiSct Viczvs. 

human side, it reflected the meanest, darkest, foul- 
est, cruelest phases of the corrupt and bloody po- 
litical governments of that time. The review of 
this history should burn into our souls the truth 
taught us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, that 
his kingdom is not of this world. The union of 
Church and State is an unnatural union. It dis- 
organizes the State and corrupts the Church. The 
history of the w^orld has furnished no exception 
to the truth of this statement. The disorgani- 
zation on the one hand, and the corruption on 
the other, have been measured by the extent to 
which this mesalliance has been carried. The 
abolition of the temporal power of the papacy did 
not come a day too soon for all concerned. The 
Methodist movement in Great Britain saved Prot- 
estant Christianity from the ruin with which it was 
threatened by its alliance with the State. The 
Greek Church has this fatal flaw. Lutheranism 
also has it. This Roman leaven must be cast out — 
and it will be. The unification of the Church will 
come by the separation from the State of all its 
branches, and their streams flowing into the one 
sea of love whose tides shall sweep away all di- 
visions among the followers of the divine, risen, 
reigning Christ. 

In California I knew men and women of the 
Roman Catholic Church w^hose nobilit}^ and sweet- 
ness of Christian character equaled the best among 
the multitudes of the noble and the good I have 
known among Protestants. If I get to heaven 
and fail to meet them there, it will be a great sur- 
prise and disappointment to me. I love all alike 
who truly bear the image of my Lord. My wish 
and prayer for the elimination of all bigotry and 
exclusiveness arise not from any lack of love for 
those from whom I am separated. It is because I 



Califoniia as Wc Found It. 137 

do love them that I want the barbed wire fences 
removed. 

The Sunday bull fight was a California insti- 
tution long after I became a citizen of the state. 
I never saw one — and never wanted to. Its bru- 
tality ought to have disgusted even the Digger In- 
dians, it has often been described as a cowardly 
sport, but the man w^ho could thus take the chances 
of impalement or of being ripped up by a tortured 
animal, and brave the righteous wn-ath of a mercy- 
loving Gocl, exhibited a quality that was not heroic 
in any honorable sense of the word, but had in it 
a cruelty that was devilishly daring. A bull fight 
on a religious holiday tells the story of the Cali- 
fornia of that curious Spanish semi-civilization, 
with one part of Christian faith and many parts 
of many things utterly unlike it. The roots of 
that one thing that was good will remain; the 
evils, having in themselves the germs of dissolu- 
tion because they are evils, will pass aw^ay. The 
bull fight will be read of in a future age with dis- 
gust mingled with incredulity; the religious holi- 
day will be more and more w^hat its name implies 
to the devout and cultured mind. To the credit of 
their religious teachers let it be said that the early 
Californians liad the sentiment of reverence left in 
their souls. At the same time truth compels the 
admission that they w^ere very weak and low in 
practical morality. The first gold-seekers did not 
make things better. Many of them left their 
regard for the ten commandments behind them 
when they started to the gold fields. When a new- 
comer expressed astonishment or indignation at the 
♦grosser exhibitions of vice, '' You forget that you 
are in California," an earlier immigrant would say 
w^ith a smile of pity on his face. The multitude 
were doing evil, and it w^as easy to run with them. 



THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 



THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 

THOUGH I was in California twenty-tliree 
years, my surprise never wore off. The 
natural features of the country itself, its 
seasons, its productions, its institutions, 
its people, were new at the start, and gave 
fresh surprises to the last. The life was so pecul- 
iar and so intense that a new-comer was quickly 
naturalized if he could only speak any sort of Eng- 
lish. Many sorts of English were spoken, from the 
best to the w^orst. The precise and pedantic Eng- 
lish of the educated NewEnglander,and the nasal 
drawl and verbal sinuosities and queer provincial- 
isms of the unlettered or partially educated NewEn- 
glander; the elegant diction of the most cultured 
Southerner, the ludicrous imitations of a class of 
pretenders who aped them, and the marvelous 
grammatical twists and mirth-provoking phases of 
the illiterate man from the South; the rugged and 
picturesque dialect of the Westerner who had 
lived close to nature and whose ideas and vocabu- 
lary were well matched in directness and vividness 
of coloring; the educated Irishman who spoke 
the best English, and the uneducated Irishman who 
spoke the funniest and most original ; the educated 
Englishman who had every word in its place 
rightly pronounced, and the Englishman to whom 
the eighth letter of the alphabet was a perpetual 
puzzle in its relation to vowel sounds; the Ger- 
man, Frenchman, Dutchman, Italian, Spaniard, 
Scandinavian, Russian, and all the rest, whose 
English, varying in quantity and quality, revealed 
their nativity and indicated how long they had been 



142 Sunset Viezvs. 

under our stars and stripes. Bishop Pierce hit it 
when he said, " Cahfornia is a jumble." It was 
a strange mixture — a little of all the world in con- 
tact, but not in cohesion. There was constant 
effervescence and startling explosions among these 
Calif ornians gathered from everywhere, and with 
so many different ways of thinking, speaking, and 
doing. There w^as a charm about it that never 
was lost — the charm of novelty. Individuality was 
marked. Conventionality had been left behind. 
The Californian was, to an extent scarcely con- 
ceivable in older communities, a law unto himself 
— and herself, I might add, for the early California 
women, though fewer in number, were not less 
notable than the men for their originality. Some 
of them, thrown on their ow^n resources, developed 
astonishing energy and capacity for self-support 
on right w^omanl}^ lines ; others exhibited aptitude 
for badness and descended hellward w-ith a ve- 
locity that was awful. When a woman does start 
down, -down she goes I Everybody expects it, 
and very many are ready to facilitate her descent. 
The best women are better than the best men, 
speaking in a general way. The worst women, if 
not really w^orse than the worst men, are more 
hopeless. Hopelessness makes recklessness. God 
pity the man or woman w^ho helps to shut all the 
doors of hope against any sinning, suffering soul! 
The tragedies that came to my knowledge in Cal- 
ifornia prove that there is a personal devil, or that 
there are malign agencies that bring to pass all the 
evil ascribed to Satan in the Holy Scriptures. A 
personal devil — why did God permit him to come 
into being? Why does not God kill him? These 
questions, asked alike by the httle child in its sim- 
plicity and by the thought-weary philosopher in 
his despair, have had many answers — some impious 



T/iosc Early Califc^ruians. 143 

and flippant, some reckless and despairing. We 
do know that the evil is here. We do know that an 
evil effect must have an evil cause. And so we are 
driven by the logic of facts to accept tlie saying 
of Jesus: An cucuiy Jiath done this. There is no 
use in ca\'iling and quibbling. Moral freedom is a 
fact. Moral freedom abused brings suffering here 
in this world where we can see and feel it. When 
the pitying Christ himself tells us that, persisted 
in, evil volition will carry its curse into the next 
world beyond, why should we doubt ? Universalism 
makes an ingenious appeal to sentiment, but the 
text of the Book and the obvious trend of all that 
is in sight now are against it. Is this a digression ? 
Not much. A glance at the worst of this life sug- 
gests a query concerning the possibilities beyond. 
If I am digressing, I will digress a little farther, 
by quoting for the reader the words: Behold^ iiozu 
is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of sal- 
vation. Now we can be saved. This ought to 
satisfy us now. Fuller light hereafter is part of 
the salvation promised. We can wait for it thank- 
fully and patiently. 

It was surprising to find that almost everything 
in California was in dispute. A lawsuitora shoot- 
ing scrape was had over almost every mining claim 
or land grant. The hottest election campaigns in 
the older states were but child's play in compari- 
son with such contests in early California. ( Every- 
body else in America save an old Californian will 
be excused for doubting this.) Oratory, treating, 
"still-hunting," mass meetings, street processions, 
personal encounters in newspaper controversy and 
with fists, knives, and pistols, made running for 
office a lively experience in those earl}^ days of 
California. The almost incredible bullying and 
terrorism of the San Francisco roughs surprised 



144 S/r;/sc/ J^iczvs. 

and for awhile paralyzed the city. The uprising 
and vengeance of the Vigilance Committee aston- 
ished, electrified all concerned. The gold fever 
somehow gave a feverish diathesis to everything 
in California. That fever burns on yet. The red- 
hot California of 1855 is a slowdy cooling but not 
cold cinder in 1898. The ashes smolder in many 
hearts that were then swept by the fires of passion, 
that never burned more fiercely this side of perdi- 
tion. 

The truly good w^ere also surprisingly good in 
the California of that time. Negative goodness 
was good for nothing then and there. The timid 
fled, the half-hearted went back and walked no 
more wdth their Lord. If there was a weak spot 
in any professed Christian's belief, it w^^s revealed; 
if there was a flaw in his character, it broke down 
at that point. Early California was strewn thick 
with moral wrecks. But those w^ho w^ere true were 
the truestof the true disciples of Jesus. Thosewho 
stood those fires heated seven-fold came forth re- 
fined of dross and shining in the beauty of holiness. 
Never for a day w^as I out of sight and touch with 
some of these faithful ones. There was Drury K. 
Bond, a miner at Sonora, w^hose sunny, friendly face 
reflected a soul as guileless as a child's ; who moved 
amid the fires of sin that raged around him, un- 
scorched ; whose look, tone, and ever3'day walk 
were so Christlike as to disarm the criticism of the 
most cynical and skeptical, and fortify the faith 
of all w^ho had faith. He became a preacher, 
spent a few years in the w^ork of the ministry, do- 
ing good in a quiet, blessed way all his own — and 
then went home to God. There w^ere other mi- 
ners like him in the California mines in that early 
time, lights shining in dark places. Then there 
was Judge David O. Shattuck, of San Francisco — 



Those Early Califoi'uicDis. 145 

that surprising compound of legal wisdom, social 
simplicity, and Methodistic strength and fervor. 
Ilis apostolic presence bespoke his goodness, a 
goodness that none could question; his judicial 
decisions were the terror of tricky lawyers and the 
joy of the common people; his sermons — he was 
a local preacher — were models of clear exegesis, 
pointed application, and fatherly tenderness. He 
w^as a marvel to all who knew him — wise as a ser- 
pent, harmless as a dove, in the sense in which 
tlie words were used by the Master in whose steps 
he walked. Here they come trooping before my 
mental vision, but here I must close this chapter. 
10 



SOME PREACHERS. 



SOME PREACHERS. 

TO hear Dr. Eustace Speer preach was Hke 
listening to a music box that played the 
tunes that were liveliest and sweetest, and 
left you wishing for more when it ceased. 
He never toyed with his subject, as the 
manner of some is. His sermons had no '* intro- 
ductions." With the first sentence he grasped his 
theme by the proper handle, and held it firmly 
to the last. Though a very rapid speaker, every 
word was well chosen and in its right place. The 
effect of his discourse \vas cumulative. When he 
stopped, the hearer had a homiletic picture vivid 
and symmetrical photographed in memory. The 
doctrine he preached had the old-time Georgia 
Methodist quality of straightedgedness. He did 
not refine, symbolize, or explain away the texts 
that reveal the God of the Bible as hatingf sin and 
loving holiness; he did not joke about hell-fire, 
as if it were only painted fire ; he did not confound 
the guilt of willful sin against God with the euphe- 
mistic phrases now used by many who preach a 
gospel of progress, so called — but progress back- 
ward toward a theology that makes a God of straw 
and ethics that make one thing about as good as 
another; the namby-pamby gospel of the babblers 
who have invented a new terminology for their 
new religion, which is no religion at all. Dr. 
Speer could make the foolishness of sin look very 
foolish indeed. The sophistry of sin he could 
reveal with logical flashes that went through it like 
X-rays. His satire burned the proud flesh of the 
unrenewed and the unrepentant like caustic. His 

(M9) 



ISO Suiiscl J 



/cms. 



wit, sparingly used in the pulpit, had a flavor like 
that of Dr. South, who impaled error on epigram- 
matic points. He used quotation with rare felicity : 
his quotations were diamonds set in gold. At Mul- 
berr}^ vStreet Church in Macon, Ga., one Sunday, 
in a discourse of exquisite beauty and tenderness, 
he quoted from '' The Pilgrim's Progress " the de- 
scription of Standfast at the crossing of the Jordan, 
and he did it in a style so graphic that the impres- 
sion remains with me undimmed to this moment. 
His short prayer-meeting talks, expository and hor- 
tatory, stirring and brief, w^ere models. I never 
heard from him a dull sermon, nor attended a 
dull service led by him. He had the social gift : he 
seemed to know^ everybody, and drew everybod}' 
to him by sympathetic attraction. And by the 
true pastoral instinct he found his w^ay to the 
places where there were sorrow^ and pain. His 
presence was gracious and exhilarating, if I may 
so describe it. About five feet ten inches in height, 
" raw-boned," rather large-limbed, wdth uneven 
features, aquiline nose, and bright brow^n, express- 
ive eyes, wdth light-brown hair covering a noble 
head firmly set on his broad shoulders — a genius 
in the pulpit, and akin to every soul he met outside 
of it: this is Dr. Speer as he appears to me after 
the lapse of the many years that have come and 
gone since I sat under his ministry — a privilege 
for which I shall never cease to be thankful. 

Dr. Whitefoord Smith Avas the most popular 
preacher in Columbia, the capital city of South 
Carolina, when I first knew him. He was a high- 
flyer whose wing was steady, and whose eye w^as 
fixed on the sun — a gray eagle of the pulpit. His 
descriptive powers w^ere remarkable : w^hat he saw 
he made his hearers see. He possessed the en- 
thusiasm that gave his subject possession of himself 



Sonic Prcaclicrs. 151 

for the time being. What he felt his hearers felt : he 
had the sincerity of conviction and intensity of feel- 
ing that made the facts of the gospel and the experi- 
ences of religion tremendously true. His hearers 
caught his enthusiasm, and were borne with him on 
the high tide of his magnificent pulpit oratory. As 
a declaimer, he was brilliant and fascinating to all 
classes of persons. The sweep of his gesture suit- 
ed the sweep of his rhetoric. It was spread-eagle 
style, but in no derogatory sense of the word: the 
king-bird of the air is never mistaken for any 
other genus. " Let us go to-night, and hear 
Whitefoord Smith," said the blase man of the 
world, who wanted a fresh luxury of some sort; 
the woman of fashion, who liked to go with the 
crowd ; the student of human nature, who took de- 
light in analyzing the elements of his pulpit power; 
the schoolboy and schoolgirl, who gloried in pul- 
pit pyrotechnics and poetry ; the old-time Metho- 
dists, who believed in a judgment day and a New 
Jerusalem with its golden streets and rainbow 
arching the great white throne on which sat the 
King of glory — all these flocked to hear Dr. 
Smith, and all were profited more or less as well 
as pleased. The Church was edified under his 
ministry, for through all his cloth-of-golden pulpit 
oratory ran the scarlet thread of the doctrine of the 
cross. He built upon the sure foundation — Christ 
Jesus, the wisdom of God and the power of God. 
He reached the masses and drew them, Christward 
— this pulpit light who soared and shone, a star of 
the first maf^nitude in the heavens. 

Dr. R. T. Nabors left a memory with us as flaw- 
less as a crystal. No one ever heard him preach 
without falling in love with both the preacher and 
his gospel. The graciousness of his message was 
equaled by the grace of its delivery. The frailty 



152 Sun set Viczvs. 

of his body marked him for early translation to the 
higher sphere whose airs he inhaled in holy com- 
munion with his Lord, and lent a pathos to his 
ministry that none could resist. Your first thought 
when you saw him enter the pulpit was that there 
was a man suited to bring us a message from the 
world of spirits : he was himself more spiritual than 
earthly, as he stood there before the people — a man 
not above medium stature, notably gentle and grace- 
ful in bearing, his palid face ashine from an inner 
light, his thin frame clad in faultless black, his 
features feminine in their fine delicacy, reflecting 
every changing phase of thought and feeling in his 
discourse, and withal an aroma of heavenly-mind- 
edness that filled the house of God wdth its fra- 
grance. He was a living epistle, know^n and read 
of all w^ho came within the range of his ministry. 
A finer touch than mine would be required to de- 
scribe his preaching. The usual descriptives seem 
coarse and awkward when applied to Nabors. 
When he was brought to Nashville and stationed 
at West End, near Vanderbilt Universit}^ one 
object had in view was to give the students of 
that institution an object lesson in saintliness — 
saintliness without sanctimony, saintliness with- 
out sentimentality or softness, the saintliness of 
a manly nature touched and transfigured by the 
touch of the Master. He was what is called by 
some a flowery preacher, but only in a good 
sense. There w^as in his soul a love of beauty that 
led to an inevitable efflorescence in his speech. 
His flowers were never artificial ; they had both 
the bloom and the fragrance of living plants grow- 
ing in the garden of the Lord. The lilies of the 
valley graced the garlands he wreathed for the 
brow of the King; the rose of Sharon with him, 
as in the Song of Songs, the queen of all. He 



Sonic Preachers. 153 

was so attuned to the diviner harmonies that his 
sermons were truth set to music. The crucified, 
risen, reigning, interceding Christ was his one 
theme of discourse. The retrain of the Corona- 
tion Hymn was the keynote of his preaching: to 
crown him Lord of all was the aim of his ministry 
and the inspiration of his eloquence. The vener- 
able chancellor of the university sat enthralled by 
his genius and uplifted by his touch, while the lit- 
tle children looked and listened with a pleasure 
and wonder they did not understand, but felt that 
it was easier for them to love the Christ preached 
to them by this disciple who lived so close to him 
and had so much of his spirit. 

George Sim, an undersized Englishman of few 
words, was a gold mmer in one of the mining 
camps of northern California. One night, ar- 
rayed in his mining apparel, a red flannel shirt and 
corduroy breeches, he sat among the hearers in 
the rear of the little chapel on the hillside. The 
preacher was filled with the Spirit, and the sermon 
shot an arrow of conviction to the heart of the 
grave and taciturn little Englishman. Conviction 
was speedily followed by conversion, and his con- 
version by a call to preach. The reader will see 
that language of certainty is used m this brief nar- 
ration. He gave every evidence that his convic- 
tion was genuine and his conversion clear. One 
of the surest evidences of his call to preach was in 
the fact that he could preach. A man who can- 
not preach is not called to that function, though 
some good men have seemed to think otherwise. 
The first time I ever heard him, and every time 
thereafter, I had a surprise. His sermons, reported 
verbatim ct literatim^ w^ould have graced any first- 
class homiletic magazine of our cla3^ There was 
a finish about them very remarkable : tlie unity of 



154 Sunset Vieivs. 

the parts, the severe sententiousness of the style, 
the closeness of the logic — in a word, the polemic 
vigor and literary beauty of his sermons were ex- 
traordinary. I never heard from his lips a dis- 
course which would not have borne the test of 
the printer's ink. Of how many living preachers 
could this be truthfully said? His preaching was 
simplicity and directness in perfection, the undi- 
luted gospel in the fewest words, mostly Anglo- 
Saxon monosyllables like his text-book, the Eng- 
lish Bible, which he quoted with special frequency 
and felicity. He knew that English Bible : he was 
saturated with it; its thought had interpenetrated 
his thought, its spirit had flooded his spirit. He 
had little gesture of any sort, was sparing in illus- 
tration or anecdote, and never uttered a joke in 
the pulpit. He simply preached the gospel, and 
nothing but the gospel, in its plainest terms and 
fewest words — not with enticing words of man's 
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of 
power. That blessed demonstration attended his 
ministry from first to last. Souls that were hun- 
gry for the word of life were eager to be fed by 
him — cultured men and women who knew the 
difference between the simple beauty of the truth 
that is the highest beauty of the universe and the 
meretricious beribboning and bespangling of it by 
bunglers and babblers. ''Where did he get all 
he knows?" was asked b}^ a scholarly man after 
meeting Sim socially. He seemed to have read 
more widely than other men with far larger oppor- 
tunit}^: the treasures of history, science, art, phi- 
losophy, and general literature, in the truest and 
largest meaning of the word, were at his command. 
No rubbish cumbered his capacious brain, and the 
glorious gospel of the grace of God filled all the 
needs of his soul. He knew it to be clothed with 



Sonic Preachers. 



:5D 



a power all its own. He felt that power in his own 
heart, and as preached by him it was felt by many 
who will be glad forever that they sat under his 
ministry. 

Another name comes in here — that of Robert 
W. Bigham, who died at Demorest, Georgia, Oc- 
tober II, 1900. He was my presiding elder in the 
California mines in 1856. "Bob" Bigham, his 
old Georgia comrades fondly called him in his 
younger days. The abbreviation was expressive 
of the affectionate familiarity that lent its special 
charm to the inner circles of clerical friendship. 
He came of good old Georgia stock, and was mold- 
ed by Georgia Methodism when it was at the height 
of its militancy and fervor. He was an uneven 
preacher: at his best his sermons were massive 
and symmetrical homiletical structures. His great- 
est failures su<{a'ested more than some noisier men 
ever say in the pulpit. He was a faithful servant 
of God. He was a true friend. "Fitzgerald," he 
said to me one day in his brotherly way, "you 
have a dangerous gift, the gift of popularity." His 
kindly heart may have led him to exaggerate the 
measure of good will felt for me by those earl}^ Cal- 
ifornians, but his admonition was timely for any 
young preacher. He was fearless and guileless. 
In a contest he never thought of making any con- 
cessions where any righteous principle or policy 
v^as involved, and was incapable of evasion. He 
w^as the soul of Christian chivalry in the truest, 
loftiest sense of the word. Our paths parted. I 
am glad that I knew him. 



FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM. 



FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM. 

THE Indian tighter, the hunter, and the cir- 
cuit rider were taking possession of the 
land. The rifle, the ax, and the saddle- 
bags held sway. Daniel Boone and Fran- 
cis Asbury typed the manhood of the time. 
The men then called of God to preach were men 
who feared not any face of clay. Only men of 
strongest mold and fearless soul could have got- 
ten a hearing. The weakly bookish and oth- 
erwise weakly pulpit peddler of theological Per- 
hapses, such as are now seen and heard in some 
places, would then have been ignored or laughed 
at. The people had no time to waste on idle or 
merely curious speculations. They gave a hear- 
ing only to men who brought them an earnest 
message in the present tense. Those old Georgia 
preachers were converted sinners who knew how 
to preach to sinners. They believed in total de- 
pravity and full salvation ; many of them claimed 
that they knew both experimentally. These preach- 
ers were the product of their times by the grace of 
God. We shall not look upon their like again. 
Men as great and as good may appear when they 
are wanted, but they will be men of a different 
type. Their chief characteristic was robustness. 
Georgia Methodism as it is now is their work. 
The names mentioned in this chapter represent 
their generation. These men — Samuel Anthony, 
James E. Evans, William J. Parks, John W. Glenn, 
and William Arnold — will sit for the picture, in 
the background of wliich are the thousands the}' 
led, the Georgia Methodism which is so largely 
the fruit of their labors. 

(■59) 



i6o Sunset Viczus. 

Samuel Anthony was my pastor at the old Mulber- 
ry Street Church in Macon when I first knew him. 
The mention of his name brings up memories that 
are vivid and sacred. In no other man have I ever 
seen such a blending of sternness and tenderness. 
While denouncing worldliness in the Church or 
threatening impenitent sinners with the wrath of 
a sin-hating God, his tall form seemed to rise to 
a loftier stature, and his voice rang out like the 
peal of a super-terrestrial trumpet. The hearer 
felt that he was listening to judgment-day thun- 
der, and could almost see the flash of its lightnings. 
In expostulation with hard-hearted sinners, and in 
pleading with backsliders to come back to the path 
of duty from which they had strayed, there was an 
awfulness in his pathos that cannot be put on pa- 
per. " It has been said that only a mother knows 
the heart of a mother," he said one day while 
making one of these appeals. " Only a mother 
knows the heart of a mother, and onl}^ a pastor 
knows the heart of a pastor" — and his frame 
quivered with irrepressible emotion as he spoke. 
There was a quaking and melting that day in the 
great congregation. The man of God felt the 
pangs of soul-travail, and a mighty revival came to 
the birth. He was a true pastor who watched for 
souls as one that must give account. Was he elo- 
quent? He was more than eloquent: he was sur- 
charged with a power that went beyond any de- 
scribable effects of tone or gesture in human 
speech. When the pulpit glow was on his strong, 
rugged face, it shone like the sunHt face of a gran- 
ite cliff. In his impassioned appeals the tones of 
his voice mellowed into sweetness and fell into the 
rhythmical flow that seems to be the natural ex- 
pression of human thought and emotion when at 
full tide. Six feet and three or four inches in 



Five Fathers of Georgia MctJwdisiu . i6i 



^ 



height, long-limbed and large-boned, with uneven 
features and particularly high cheek bones, deep- 
set blue eyes under heavy, dark eyebrows, with a 
complexion that spoke of fresh air and temperate 
living — this is the man as he now comes up before 
my mind. I humbly thank God that I ever met 
him and sat under his ministry. 

John W. Glenn was my first presiding elder. He 
was a presiding elder w^ho presided ; he was a lead- 
er who led. He was a rugged sage who saw men 
and things in the dry light of real facts, and who 
acted upon the facts as he saw them with almost 
mathematical certainty. He knew nothing of eva- 
sion or irresolution. There were to him only two 
sides to any question — the right side and the 
wrong side. He marshaled his Church forces like 
a true general who knew what ought to be done, 
and calculated to a fraction the resources at his 
command. He planned wisely, and then moved 
boldl}' — as Von Moltke phrased it, ** he pon- 
dered well, and then dared." The Church moved 
forw^ard under his leadership. The stragglers 
were disciplined and made to keep step, or were 
drummed out of camp. He was a true disciplin- 
arian: that is to say, he knew the law of the 
Church by heart, and enforced it to the letter. 
The paternal element was conjoined with the au- 
tocratic in his make-up. To me, a young preach- 
er with everything to learn, he w^as patient and 
faithful in his dealing. His outburst of opposition 
to my going to California almost electrified me. It 
is plain enough to me now that he saw farther and 
more clearly than some others w^ho then had the 
ear of the Church. As a preacher the substance 
of his message was: Obey the gospel, do your 
duty now as God commands, and receive his bless- 
ing; disobey or delay at the peril of your soul. 



1 62 SicJiset l^/ezvs. 

He spoke as one having authority, as the accred- 
ited minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, called, com- 
missioned, and equipped for the work committed 
unto him. The pleasure of the Lord prospered in 
his hand. He never took a backward step as a lead- 
er. He never cheapened the terms of membership 
in the Church to accomrriodate or conciliate the 
half-hearted. He did not use sedatives where caus- 
tic was needed in dealing with diseased members of 
the ecclesiastical bod}'. His faithful ministry re- 
sulted in the awakening and reclamation of many 
souls, while it conserved the purity and power of 
the Church. Standing on his sturdy limbs, ro- 
bust of frame, with a leonine head massive and 
bushy-haired, with a face whose features expressed 
transparent honesty and courageous forcefulness, 
the figure of John W. Glenn will hold its place 
among the men who led Georgia Methodism in the 
days of its highest militancy. 

James E. Evans was the weeping prophet in his 
day, a man who could preach and sing and pray 
with an intensity of feeling and a sustained energy 
that were little short of the miraculous. The dom- 
inant note of his preaching was its fervidness. 
His soul was on fire, and he kindled a holy con- 
flagration wherever he went. Charles Wesley's 
hymns as sung by him seemed to catch an added 
glow and a more thrilling power. He could preach 
three sermons a day, lead the singing at every 
service, exhort mightily, and make intercessory 
prayers that seemed to lift penitent souls for whom 
he prayed into the very arms of the pitying Christ. 
Those sermons, exhortations, songs, and prayers 
are echoing in living hearts to-day; they set in 
motion tides of crracious influence that will break 
upon the shore of eternity. He was a marked 
exception to the rule that the revivalist ^nnd the 



I^/z'C I^ii/hc?'S of Georgia Mclhodisni. 163 

Church financier are not to be looked for in the 
same person. He had a double vocation as preach- 
er, church-builder, and debt-raiser. His great 
physical stature, his personal magnetism, the mel- 
ody of his voice, and his versatility in social gifts 
marked him for leadership in the Church. He was 
a faithful steward of the manifold grace of God. 
His tread was that of a giant. Georgia Metho- 
dism w^ill bear the impress of his genius as long as 
the waters of the Ocmulgee sing their way to the 
sea. 

The one word that comes to my pen point in de- 
scribing William J. Parks is "aggressiveness." He 
pushed to his logical conclusions over all sophis- 
tries and suppressions. He pushed his way to de- 
sired results over all opposers. He was the auto- 
crat of debate: the most eloquent orators and the 
most subtle special pleaders went down before the 
onset of this man, w^ho always seemed to know all 
the facts involved in a discussion and to be able to 
set them forth in the fewest and most forcible 
words. There was no confusion in his thought, 
no waste in his verbiage. He was in himself a 
Conference majority in most cases by the mere 
force of his parliamentary genius. In a legislative 
body where he could have found full play for his 
powers he would have ranked with the first men 
of his time. He was as an oracle for wisdom 
among his compeers, and had a permanent follow- 
ing among the masses accorded onlv to men who 
are born to lead. His sermons were like shots 
from a rifled gun before which nothing could 
stand. He could impale an error or expose a fal- 
lacy in a single sentence that struck to the heart 
and stuck to the memory. He was deliberation 
personified. His sayings were quoted far and 
wide; "Uncle" Billy Parks, as the people fondly 



164 Sunsef Views. 

called mm, thus furnished ammunition for multi- 
tudes of Methodists in their polemic warfare, and 
in their conflict with the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. His character and his work are as solid 
and enduring as the strength-girded Stone Moun- 
tain upon which the storms have beaten from cen- 
tur}^ to centur}^ and left no scar. 

William Arnold was unique among his contem- 
poraries. He stood alone as the delineator of the 
lives of the saints and painter of the glories of heav- 
en. Far and near he was sent for to preach funeral 
sermons for the old and the young, the rich and the 
poor alike. With his long white hair, serene, rud- 
dy face, soul-lit blue eyes, and apostolic presence, 
he seemed to belong to the spiritual world of which 
it was his delight to preach to the rapt and tearful 
multitudes that sat under his ministry. To look 
upon him and hear him made it easy to believe in 
the truths he proclaimed and to love the Christ 
whose image he bore. He was a living demonstra- 
tion of the power of the gospel to lift men above 
the plane of nature — a walking embodiment of 
that spiritually-mindedness which is life and peace. 
When he stood in the pulpit, with his silver locks 
falling around his temples, his rapt face aglow with 
the holy flame that burned within his soul, it seemed 
to the lookers-on that in him the two worlds met. 
Death, the resurrection, and the joys of the re- 
deemed were his themes — especially the joys of 
the glorified saints. The best hymns that bore on 
these subjects he quoted with wonderful fluency 
and appositeness: many of his funeral sermons 
were hymnological mosaics, sparkling in more than 
poetic beauty. The popular impression was that 
he improvised much of the verse he uttered: it 
came from his heart with a spontaneity and unctu- 
ousness that seemed like inspiration rather than 



Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism . 165 

memory. The listening saints fell in love with the 
heaven of which he preached and sang, renewed 
their vows, and quickened their steps thitherward. 
The mourners looked up through their tears and 
took comfort. At times a mighty afflatus would 
descend upon the man of God and upon the wait- 
ing assembly, and preacher and people were swept 
away upon mighty tides of emotion that could no 
more be checked than the roll of the ocean at its 
flood. Nobody wished to check the mighty and 
solemn joy. It came because the channels were 
open ; they let ic flow in unhindered, and praised 
God for a present salvation and a hope that was 
full of glory. Uncramped by conventionalities, 
and unused to repression of opinion or feeling, 
they could not help shouting. It is almost certain 
that they did not try to help it. It did not hurt 
them. Their joy was full, and tliey gave it vent 
in their own way. The voices of the white-haired 
preacher and most of those old shouting Georgia 
Methodists have long since joined in the hallelu- 
iahs of the glorified hosts in the city of God. The 
echoes will never cease among their s;uiitual chil- 
dren so long as there is a Methodist W/me or a 
Methodist altar in Georgia. 



THE OLD PANEL. 



THE OLD PANEL. 

THEY were of the race of the Colossi — 
those bishops of the old panel of Southern 
Methodists. There was not a runt nor a 
weakling among them. They differed one 
from another as widely as good men could 
differ. They were not all equally great, but each 
was a genius in his own way. Men as great as 
they, and even greater than some of them, failing 
nowhere save in elections to connectional office, 
lived obscure lives in narrower spheres of service, 
and had no memorial other than the obituary de- 
partment of the Church paper and the mortuary 
register of the Annual Conference. They did not 
live for fame ; their record is on high — and that is 
all they sought. Butwe have found ourselves ask- 
ing. What would have been the record of certain 
gifted men w^ho were talked of and voted for for 
the episcopacy, had they not died without it ? Who 
knows? Mere officeholding is not fame. To the 
incompetent and unworth}^, both in Church and 
State, it has been a pillor\' rather than a pedestal. 
Joshua Soule stood at the head of the old panel of 
bishops in more senses than one. He was a South- 
ern Methodist from Maine. With half a chance, 
those big-framed men from Maine made excellent 
Southerners. There was a tonic quality in its 
great forests of pine and in its coast breezes that 
gave a bulk, firmness, and fineness to its manhood 
that found responsiveness in the large-framed, lib- 
eral-minded, high-mettled Southerners of the best 
class. Blaine's personal popularity in the South 
was verv great; and when he made an anti-climax 

(169) 



170 Sunset Viczvs. 

of his public career, the South was a chief mourner 
at his political grave. That other man from Maine, 
Speaker Reed — Tom Reed, "the Czar," in news- 
paper lingo — was a social lion among Southern- 
ers in Washington City. These men were weighty, 
warm-blooded, human — not lucky in politics, but 
with a personal following like that of Clay or Jack- 
son. When Joshua Soule refused ordination on 
what many men would have called a mere punctilio, 
but what was to him a point of honor, he showed the 
metal of which he was made. He was wrought 
steel, double-refined in the fiery trials that some- 
how come in some form to every man who does 
anj'thing worth doing in this world. He left noth- 
ing behind him worth mentioning in the line of 
written or printed thought. He was not a writer, 
nor a dreamer, nor a theorizer. He was a Metho- 
dist preacher who stuck to his vocation, and an 
administrator who administered according to the 
Methodist discipline, with an eye single to duty 
as prescribed by the law of the Church and the 
Head of the Church. But though he left behind 
him no "literary remains," he did bequeath to the 
Church a legacy rich beyond computation — a life 
without spot or blemish, or any such thing; an ex- 
ample of subordination of self to duty in the pres- 
ent tense, imperative mood; a nobility of Christian 
manhood that stood ever}^ test. He set the fashion, 
so to speak, in his great office. His life is worth 
more to his Church than a library filled with books 
that deal with Christian duty and ethics as ab- 
stractions. Any man, in the succession to Bishop 
Soule, who should prove to be self-seeking, cow- 
ardly, or small-minded, would furnish a demon- 
stration of invincible natural depravity and sinis- 
ter heredity. Bishop Soule looked the man he 
was: tall and statel}^ with the gravity of a thinker; 



The Old Panel. 171 

virile, incisive, reverend, serene, with that impres- 
sion of reserved force peculiar to the grand men 
who possess it; a man among men, and a mighty 
man of God. 

When the famous race horse, " Bascom," was 
announced as the winner on the race track at 
Lexington, Ky., a gigantic Kentuckian, amid the 
cheering of the crowd, exclaimed, " Hurrah for 
Bascom ! I'll bet ten thousand dollars that the 
man that colt was named for can beat any other 
man preaching in these United States." He found 
no takers in that crowd. The great preacher was 
at the top of his fame, the man of the hour as a 
pulpit orator. That is what remains of Bascom — 
the tradition of wonderful oratory. " Bascom can- 
not be described," said Bishop Kavanaugh ; "he 
was simply overwhelming. There was a majesty 
of bearing, a rush of imagery, a vehemence of 
manner, a flow of emotion that could not be an- 
alyzed or described. I loved him," continued 
his lovable and much-loved successor, "for he 
was as absolutely guileless and tender of heart 
as he was transcendent in his intellectual endow- 
ment." Bascom's printed sermons were a disap- 
pointment. The Bascom who thrilled with his 
wonderful oratory the crowds who thronged to 
hear him at our national capital — whose name was 
the synonym for eloquence everywhere among his 
countrymen, drawing the largest congregations and 
eliciting the largest share of contemporaneous ad- 
miration and applause — is looked for in vain in 
these printed sermons. For the most part they 
are magniloquent, turgid, and rickety in structure: 
here and there they have a touch so giant-like in 
its swing and power that the reader recognizes the 
production of genius, though it is genius unhar- 
nessed and half asleep. He was undoubtedly a 



172 Sunset Views. 

verv great preacher; and not only the tradition of 
his wonderful oratory, but the fruit of it, abides. 
He was a man of sorrows. He stands before the 
Church like a mountain peak overtopping the sur- 
rounding hills, its sides draped in the mist, cloud- 
capped, the light breaking through the gloom at the 
sunset. 

The one word that describes Bishop James O. 
Andrew is the word "fatherly " — the sort of father- 
liness that implies not only benignity, but strength, 
wisdom, forethought, patience. He was a vicari- 
ous sufferer, the storm-center of a tempestuous 
epoch in the history of the Church. It so happened 
that this most fatherly man gave occasion for the 
clash that w^as bound to come because it was bar- 
gained for in antecedent legislation both in Church 
and State, and was involved in the conjunction of 
conditions that precipitated the long-dreaded yet 
inevitable catastrophe. He was strong enough and 
true enough for the crisis. Pushed to the front of 
the line of battle, he had at his back all the forces 
of his section. It was a sectional fight: the old 
regime and the letter of the constitution w^ere on 
the side of the South, and the drift of events and 
the spirit of the age were with the North. The 
split in the Methodist Episcopal Church was only 
a symptom of a disease, the germs of which were 
injected into the body politic by the framers of our 
government. The first gun in our civil war was 
fired at Philadelphia in 1789, and the last at Ap- 
pomattox in 1865. Yes, the last: whatever may 
be the destiny awaiting this nation in the unknown 
future, it will be met by us as a united people. 
During all those years of strife, neither weakness 
nor acrimony was ever exhibited by Bishop An- 
drew : through it all he bore himself with dignity 
and patience. His face bore the marks of inward 



The Old Panel. 173 

struggle, but he gave no outward sign of the secret 
griefs that he carried only to the Lord who was 
his sun and shield. Full-grown and stalwart, 
forcefulness and friendliness beaming from his 
strong, open face, his thin gray locks falling on 
either side of his noble head, he stands in his lot 
in Church history, a father in Israel who will hold 
his place in the veneration and affection of our 
people so long as they maintain the principles of 
truth and righteousness for which he was a cham- 
pion and in some sense a mart3'r. 

Standing in close relation to Bishop Andrew, his- 
torically and otherwise, is Bishop Robert Paine. 
Born in North Carolina, trained for his work in 
Alabama, matured and developed in Mississippi, 
and mellowed and sweetened in his wide sphere of 
connectional service and in the school of suffer- 
ing, he did a work for the Church whose value 
cannot be computed this side of the judgment day. 
He was a Southern gentleman of the old school, a 
Christian of the type that built up what is best in 
our civilization, a servant of the Church who was 
faithful to every trust and equal to the heavy re- 
sponsibilities devolved upon him by the suffrages 
of his brethren. To have known him was to pos- 
sess a prophylactic against misanthropy or pessi- 
mistic views as to the ultimate possibilities of hu- 
man nature. As president of a Christian college 
the quality of Christian manhood revealed to his 
pupils in his daily intercourse with them what 
lies beyond all text-book pedagogy: the possibili- 
ty of such an imitation of Christ as kindled within 
them the loftiest aspiration and spurred them to 
the most strenuous endeavor. The only thing of 
essential importance concerning any man, young 
or old, is just this: the quality of his manhood. 
The traditions of Bishop Paine at Lagrange Col- 



174 SuJiset Views. 

lege remain among us to this day; and the Hfe of 
this land of ours is purer and sweeter because of 
the fact that by word and deed this Christian gen- 
tleman and scholar put his impress upon the souls 
of his students. Bishop Paine w^as one of the men 
w^hose very excellences might disparage him in the 
judgment of the superficial. He was so rounded 
in character and in his intellectual make-up that 
the wonder-hunters looked elsewhere for mate- 
rial to satisfy their morbid cravings. The erratic 
genius who is one half crank and the other half 
a nondescript mixture will make more noise and 
oftener get his name into men's mouths and the 
new^spapers, but when he dies nothing more is left 
of him than of the meteors that stream across the 
November heavens at night. Men like Bishop 
Paine shine on like the fixed stars. During his 
lifetime he was not accredited with a great num- 
ber of great sermons — sermons of "phenomenal 
brilliancy, profundity, and power," using the ste- 
reotyped phraseology — but his pulpit w^ork was uni- 
formly so lofty that excellence was assumed as a 
matter of course. As a bishop, he formed correct 
judgments of men and things and did what was 
right and w^ise so habitually that it was only after 
he was disabled from further service that the 
Church began to realize his worth. This man of 
gentle blood, upon whose fine natural stock was 
ingrafted the diviner element of the Christ-life, 
subsided first into graceful superannuation, and 
then w^ent up to be forever wdth the Lord whom 
he followed so long with loving heart and steady 
steps. 

Bishop John Early was of the virile old Virginia 
clan of that name, a clan whose spinality stands 
all tests. General Jubal Early was one of these: 
he who refused to sign the ordinance of secession 



The Old Panel. 175 

when Virginia went out of the Union, and also re- 
fused to surrender when the Southern Confedera- 
cy furled its banner at Appomattox. They are a 
self-directing, aggressive, persistent race, hard to 
turn when once started on a chosen line of action. 
To such men neutrality is mcomprehensible where 
anything is at stake worth fighting for, and retreat 
or surrender untliinkable while there is one round 
of ammunition left. All the diplomacy Bishop 
Early knew and practiced w^as the diplomacy of 
the imperative mood on the basis of existing facts. 
As a pastor, he saw what his parishioners ought to 
do and led them to do it. As a presiding elder, he 
planned campaigns of church-building and soul- 
saving and executed them with a celerity and vig- 
or that made the dawdling and timid dizzy. As a 
connectional Book Agent, he exhibited the same 
business qualities. As a preacher, he w^as simply 
John Early: there was none exactly like him, and 
he left no successor. He had a mighty faith in 
God. He was a phenomenal revivalist. The 
saints rallied to his call, and sinners capitulated. 
He had his own w^ay of doing things. *' Touch 
her if you dare! " he said to an irate youth who 
essayed to force his sister from the altar where she 
was kneeling with others during one of his revival 
meetings. The youth did not dare: the tone and 
tresture of the militant elder caused a sudden 
change of purpose. The tender side of Bishop 
Early never left him: he w^as brother, father, 
friend, helper wherever brotherliness, friendship, 
and helpfulness were needed. When there was a 
fight on hand he was not dodging in the rear, but 
at the front shooting bullets ; but he never fired 
under the white flag nor struck an unfair blow. 
He lived to be an old man, and was w^eary toward 
the end. When his discharge came he w^as glad. 



176 Sunset Vlezvs. 

George F. Pierce, a pulpit monarch and master 
of the platform, a genius without eccentricity; 
Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, whose eloquence was a 
demonstration of the supernatural element that is 
imparted to human thought and speech, according 
to the promise of the L,ord, whose humor and gen- 
tleness flooded with sunshine all the circles he 
touched in his long and illustrious career; Hol- 
land N. McTyeire, "a leader of men and a lover 
of little children," whose greatness will grow with 
the coming years that will more and more reveal 
the far-reaching wisdom of his plans, the mighti- 
ness of his stroke, and the singleness of his. aim; 
David S. Doggett, <'the golden-mouthed" ; Enoch 
Marvin, the Missourian, whose career shows how 
the divine touch transfigures whomsoever receives 
it, who stirred the hearts of the multitudes that 
hung upon his lips as he preached a full gospel 
from a soul fully baptized with the Holy Ghost 
sent down from heaven ; William Capers, the apos- 
tle of negro evangelization in the South, a man 
who in the social circle and ever^^where exhibited 
the polish of genuine culture, and in the pulpit 
flamed with the true pentecostal glory; Linus 
Parker, whose life was an evangelical poem, who 
wrote editorials noted alike for classic beauty 
and spiritual insight, whose sermons were flawless 
homiletic cr^^stals — all these belonged to the old 
panel, but as I have m.ide larger mention of them 
elsewhere, this glance will suffice here. 



A MIDWINTER MEDITATION. 



la 



A MIDWINTER iMEDITATION. 

STEADY, steady! To-day, January 23, 
1900, the suggestion comes to me that the 
work of my Hfe is done. The questions 
that arise in my mind are searching, the 
feehngs aroused are unspeakably solemn. 
The work of my life — what has been its prime mo- 
tive and inspiration? Have I built upon the true 
foundation? The words of the apostle Paul in the 
third chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians 
speak to my inner ear : ' ' Other foundation can no 
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, 
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every 
man's work shall be made manifest: for the da^; 
shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire , 
and the fire shall try every man's work of whal 
sort it is." 

Steady ! We all know that the last stroke must 
come some day. But to me this has hitherto al- 
ways seemed a far-off possibilit}-. I sit and face 
the issue, knowing that here is a blessing for me if 
I have faith to grasp it. 

Steady ! The richest blessing that can come to 
me is to make God's, w^ill my will in all things at 
all times. The habitudes of my life have been 
such as to make this test a test indeed. 

Softly! The blessing is here. The thought 
comes to me to-day, not for the first time, that by 
the gracious law of compensation that seems to run 
through all the divine administration as far as we 
can trace its operation, the very excess of pain 
blunts its edge ; the very extremity of weakness 

(■79) 



I So Simsct Viezvs, 

tempers the consciousness of it. Thus thinking, I 
open a book lying on my table — "The Pilgrim's 
Progress" — and read John Bunyan's account of 
Mr. Standfast's crossing the Jordan at a time 
*'when there was a great calm in the river" — and 
it seems to me that if I should be called to go over 
to-day there would be no storm upon its banks. 
Th}^ will be done, O God ! The foundation stand- 
eth sure. 

A LITTLE NOTE. 

I w^AS tempted by my love of the men, and from 
force of habit long indulged, to give in these pages 
a brief sketch of each and all of my colleagues in 
the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. But I forbear — saying only this 
word from the depths of my heart : The longer and 
more fully I have known them — each and all — the 
more absolute has been my confidence in them and 
love for them. Their brotherly kindness to me 
has been unvarying and unstinted. 

O. P. Fitzgerald. 



MY IMPULSIVE FRIEND 



MY IMPULSIVE FRIEND. 



BLESS his restless, rapturous, lowly, lofty 
soul I For a long time I have been trying 
to keep up with him. It has been a lively 
chase that he has led me. Not for the 
first time, the thought comes to me here 
that for a good reason I understand him better 
than do others. That reason is found in the fact 
that there is between us some similarity of disposi- 
tion. Among my readers there may also be some 
persons who will recognize in this pen sketch some 
reflection of their own lineaments. Along this line 
there are touches of nature that should make us all 
kin. The pocket glasses carried by most of us are 
usually imperfect reflectors: the light is not clear 
when self is the medium. The practical, plain- 
spoken apostle James tells us that a man beholding 
his own natural face in a glass goeth his way, and 
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is. 
My impulsive friend belongs to a large family con- 
nection, albeit many of his kinsfolk do not recog- 
nize the relationship. 

Blessings on him, my impulsive friend, who is a 
puzzle to all that know him and a mystery unto 
himself! Blessings on him now, as the sunset of 
his life draws near! There is a mighty comfort in 
the fact that he is in the keeping of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is the one only infallible Priest of 
every human soul. He knows our frames. 

Blessings on my impulsive friend as the shadows 
lengthen ! The thought of him recalls the peculiar 

(■83) 



184 Sunset V/cii'S. 

prayer attributed to a dying man of eccentric dis- 
position. He had been excitable, impulsive, way- 
ward, uneven in his career, and he knew it was so.' 
This was his prayer: " O Lord, thou knowest me 
better than I know myself. I cannot tell thee any- 
thing that is new. Thou knowest that I have done 
many things in my time, some good and some bad. 
Be pleased, O Lord, to put the good against the 
bad, and so balance the account." Blessings on 
the erring, perplexed soul of such a man as this ! 
He is akin to every one of us, more or less. The 
great High Priest will teach us a wiser, safer way 
than is suggested by such a prayer, but we need 
not play the Pharisee, by drawing around us the 
robes of self-righteousness with thankful confes- 
sions of our own superiority. 

My impulsive friend has been a perplexity to his 
friends and a discouragement to himself for a long, 
long time. But he has been gaining ground. 
Comparing himself wath himself, one season after 
another, this is surely true: he is growing in 
grace and in the knowledge of what is best for a 
man to know. The wisdom which is from above 
is patient. 

My impulsive friend, looking upon the world as 
it is, with all its sorrow and pain, its darkness 
and its agonies, its disease and death, has at times 
fallen into doubt and almost sunk into despair. 
"What is the use of contending against such 
odds?" he asks himself. ''The mystery of it all 
confounds me; the bitterness of it is too much for 
me." So he says, and then he sings a pessimistic 
dirge to the old tune that w-as used by Job and his 
successors — the triumph of evil over good in this 
world. In this frame of mind he declares that he 
is sorry that he was ever born into such a world, 
and professes that he would be glad to get out of 



Mv hiipuhiz'c Frioid. 185 

the whole thinor if he could, lie feels that it is 
all a mockery and a failure, and passionately he 
avers that he would like to stand from under the 
pressure of such an existence. Soon thereafter, 
perhaps the very next week, he reads of the vic- 
tories of truth and of the joys enkindled by love 
in past times and in his own day here and there; 
as he reads his. own heart catches the glow, and 
he feels that nothintj is too hard for God. He is 
then ready to contract for the conversion of the 
whole world. In the arms of love that encompass 
him he cannot doubt that all mankind may be 
clasped. He insists on the practicability of the 
immediate conversion of the world, enjoins in a 
most literal sense obedience to the command to do 
that work at once — and astonishes himself and 
others by what he undertakes as a worker or giver 
while in this frame of mind. Bless his excitable 
spirit! His optimism of faith is genuine, lifting 
him to a height where he sees what is hidden from 
souls that never rise above the dead level of life's 
routine ; nor will he ever again descend to the dis- 
mal sphere in which the Lord is judged alone by 
feeble sense. Thenceforth he watches and prays 
more earnestly, gaining all the while in the knowl- 
edge of God and of himself. 

My impulsive friend is not lacking in courage 
and combativeness. These qualities do not al- 
ways go together, but they are not incompatible. 
My friend has had militant moods in which he 
seemed anxious without delay to meet and van- 
quish all the foes of truth and righteousness, or to 
die in the attempt. While in such a mood as this, 
it seemed to him that he could glory in tribulation, 
and a little touch of martyrdom had a charm for 
his imagination. As a good soldier of Jesus Christ 
he saw at such times the near approach of the 



i86 Sunset Views. 

promised triumph of his kingdom. Most earnestly 
he insisted on obedience to marching orders from 
the Captain of our salvation, and was ready to 
lead the assault on the strongholds of the enemy. 
He was impatient of delay, and for doubters he 
felt only a sort of impatient pity. After one of 
these militant moods would tome a reaction. An 
impulse in the direction of what seemed to him a 
proper humility of spirit led him to question his 
own fitness for any place in the army of the Lord. 
To be a doorkeeper in his house exceeded his 
sense of merit. This feeling of unworthiness led 
him to think that for him there was no call to 
leadership or aggressiveness of any sort in the 
militant Church. It then seemed to him that 
about the best thing he could do for the cause 
would be to stand aside where he could not do 
anything to confuse the counsel or to obstruct the 
movement of the hosts of Israel. But he did not 
actually retire from the field of battle while he was 
in this desponding mood. While he was under his 
courageous and aggressive impulse he made actu- 
al advance into the enemy's country, and therein 
helped to lift up standards that will never be low- 
ered or withdrawn. 

Bless his heart, the heart of my impulsive 
brother! Those w^ho know him best love him 
most. They know numberless things that attest 
the essential trueness of his great, warm heart, 
thing's that the world outside can never know. 
They see that as the years go by his spirit is more 
serene and his gait is steadier. His impulses 
carry him more and more in one direction — Christ- 
w^ard. The hair of his head grows thinner and 
whiter, and his face is marked by the tracks of 
time and toil and suffering. The light of a living 
hope is in his eye, the joy of a love that abides is 



My Inipuhive Friend, 187 

in his heart. He is more and more tender and 
patient toward souls that are weak in the faith. 
He prays more and is less inclined to disputation. 
Everything we know concerning him encourages 
the hope that he will finish his course with joy. 

The Shepherd and Bishop of souls knows how 
to deal with impulsive spirits. In the fellowship 
that awaits the redeemed, which will be illimitable 
in duration, we will celebrate more fitly the mercy 
that saves these souls. The apostle Paul was 
meditatinor on this line of thought when he said: 
** We all, with open face beholding as in a glass 
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
of the Lord." We shall be like him, for we shall 
see him as he is. The patience that bore with 
us, the wisdom that planned and managed for us, 
the power that protected us, the love that demon- 
strated to us that we had a Saviour on earth, will 
up there culminate in a supreme glorification 
which in its essential elements will be more and 
more an assimilation. 



SOME TYPES OF METHODIST WOMEN. 



SOME TYPES OF METHODIST WOMEN. 

THERE is nothing that is invidious in my 
intention in speaking here of Methodist 
women particidarly. Tliere are other 
women in other circles just hke these 
Methodist women that I have known more 
intimately for so long a time. Whatsoever is true, 
whatsoever is of good report in my life, has come 
to me largely through the ministry of these blessed 
Methodist w^omen. The heaven that is pictured 
in my hope, and to which I feel that I am drawing 
nearer day by day, is a heaven largely of their 
making, and of w^hich they will surely be one of 
the chiefest of constituent elements. In presenting 
these types of our elect women, I call no names 
for obvious reasons; but if some of them should 
be recognized by some of my readers, I shall not 
be surprised nor displeased. Many of our best 
w^omen have had no public recognition ; they have 
shrunk from it and found work enough to keep 
them busy in quieter ways. A rather prosy poet 
has said something of *' stars retired in solitudes of 
ether, not of essential splendor less, though shining 
unobserved," and his words come to mind in this 
connection. 

There comes before my mind one of these truly 
elect women: a queen crowned in holy beauty, 
the wife of a chief pastor of the Church. She 
brings with her an atmosphere of worship, diffus- 
ing the fragrance of heaven. Those Western 
worshipers breathed more quietly after her coming 
and were readier for God's message. She was 
tall and straight, gentle and graceful in move- 

('90 



19- Sunset Views. 

ment; her face was the face of a saint who had 
done some thinking and had known some suffer- 
ing in her day; the silvered hair and noble brow 
lent to her head the halo that the old masters put 
on the heads of the holy women who walked with 
their Lord in white. Her voice was low and soft. 
When she led in prayer in the great congregation, 
or in a smaller assembly of worshipers, it was a 
leading indeed — for she voiced the desire of souls 
in a way that showed that her sympathies touched 
her fellow-worshipers and her faith touched God 
at the same moment. The polish that comes from 
successive generations of Christian ladyhood, and 
the molding that comes of the fusion at a white 
heat in the Master's image,, made her a living 
epistle in which could be read the beauty of holi- 
ness, working in our homes the miracles of grace 
that verified unto our faith the miracles of glory 
yet to be revealed. She left in all the homes she 
entered a. memory that is a joy. 

Here is another elect sister, also the wife of a 
chief pastor in the Church. He was perhaps the 
most brilliant and popular pulpit orator in our en- 
tire communion, but she was as free from self- 
consciousness as a violet blooming by the wayside. 
She was a wife, a mother, a sister, a neighbor; 
and in all these relations she seemed to have a call 
to gather up the fragments of religious oppor- 
tunity that might otherwise be lost. To her hus- 
band, coming from his public duties with over- 
wrought nerves and exhausted energy, her look, 
her tone, her restfulness of spirit were as a quiet- 
ing potion. She was a mother in Israel whose 
presence made it easier for us all to understand the 
revelation which the Heavenly Father has given of 
his love to his children. When in troublous times 
her husband was called to walk throuorh the fires. 



Sonic 7\pcs of jMcthodist ITonuvi. 193 

she walked with him an unconscious heroine who 
would have met martyrdom had it come to her 
in the w^ay of duty without a murmur or a dread. 

Here is another of these chosen ones, and she 
too was a chief pastor's helpmeet. They were 
truly a royal pair, using the word to describe 
what is noblest in man and what is loveliest in 
woman. Seeing them together, it was easy to be- 
Heve that their union was predestined. It was not 
a union of opposite qualities that balanced, but of 
tastes, gifts, and convictions that drew them into 
the same paths of consecrated service for their 
Lord and toward each other. In the homes of the 
rich she moved with a queenly grace all her own. 
In the roughest log cabin or board shanty she bore 
herself with a dignity and tactfulness so perfect 
that poverty claimed kinship with her, and in the 
rudest circles she left a memory of lofty Christian 
womanhood that never left them. 

There w^as one of these elect women who had a 
gift for teaching and for prayer, and who went 
as a missionary to the foreign field, and gave her- 
self wholly to the Master's service that struck 
only that one note. No person that ever met her 
thought of her in connection with any marriage 
save her union with the Christ, the heavenly Bride- 
groom, who is wedded to the Church bought by 
his own blood. Absolute consecration was her 
message to the Church. That she should become 
a chronic invalid, and suffer intensely from bodily 
pain, is one of those mysteries of divine provi- 
dence that confound us all along in reading the 
history of this world. She suffered long and in- 
tensely; but she kept at her work without any in- 
termission, uttering no word of complaint from 
first to last. The eyes of the whole Church were 
fixed upon her as from day to day were read the 

13 



194 Sunset I7czi's. 

reports of the progress of her malady; the object 
lesson needed by all was furnished by her — the 
lesson of a complete consecration to one work, 
and that consecration maintained with unflinching 
courage and hopefulness, feeling that w^hile flesh 
and heart were failing God was the strength of her 
heart and would be her portion forever. God's 
grace was sufficient for her in the absence of al- 
most everything to which our poor human nature 
clings, demonstrating that in these days as in 
earlier times we may have such a measure of the 
love of God as gives unbroken peace to the fully 
consecrated soul. 

I knew an elect maiden whose gift was that of 
holy song, and she stirred up the gift that was in 
her in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. 
The melody that was in her heart tuned her voice, 
giving it a quality that all the schools of the world 
could not impart. She delighted in singing, and 
her singing was a joy to all who heard. At the 
exact moment and with unfailing adaptation she 
was always ready to glorify her Lord and give a 
special blessing to a band of believers by snatches 
of holy song, that still echo in living hearts. This 
daughter of music sang her life song — and then 
she died. I think of her in that city of God 
where she has caught the melody of the " new 
song" sung by the elders having harps and gold- 
en vials full of odors to the Lamb that was slain, 
who redeemed us to God by his blood out of 
every kindred and tongue and nation. 

There was another elect woman who might be 
classified under this text of Scripture: *'The 
Lord loveth whom he chasteneth." She ate the 
bread of dependence, and had not where to lay 
her head except as it was the gift of charity. 
The property that had been possessed by her fam- 



Sonic Txpcs of MctJiodist Women. 195 

ily had been swept away by a delu<4"e of financial 
disaster. She was an invahd witliout hope of 
cure, a sufferer every day and every night. She 
made no complaint. Nothing in her look or tone 
indicated that the ugly serpent, Envy, had any 
hiding place in her trusting heart. Over her 
wasted features a deeper spiritual beauty shone, 
and all who saw her recognized a sufferer who had 
learned her lesson in communion with the Man of 
Sorrows. 

The distinctive fact concerning another of our 
women was that she gave, and gave of her sub- 
stance to glorify God and to bless her generation. 
A look into her face was a luminous comment on 
this text: ''The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." 
That love irradiated her entire personality. It 
overflowed her in the buoyancy of spirit. Follow- 
ing in tlie footsteps of her Master, she went about 
doing good. She subsidized all the charitable or- 
ganizations within reach, and made many like- 
minded persons coworkers with herself in the dis- 
tribution of her money. God showed his love for 
her as a cheerful giver, I may reverently suggest: 
First, by blessing her providentially with the re- 
sources required to maintain her record as a cheer- 
ful giver; secondly, by actually keeping her in a 
cheerful mood that was as a stream that flowed 
from an unfailing fountain ; and thirdly, by that 
exuberance in the joy of her beneficent life that 
makes the love of God so sweet to such elect souls. 
In her soul the kingdom of heaven had flowered into 
that joy as its crowning manifestation. 

The image of one more of these elect women 
shapes itself on this page. She knew joy and 
grief, ease and pain in their turn. She was tried 
by every test in her life of prayer. She took the 
word of God as a light to her path and a lamp to 



196 Si(}isct ]^iczvs. 

her feet. For more than fifty years I knew her 
Hfe. If there was one false note in that hfe dur- 
ing all that time, I never discovered it. This leads 
me to say, in concluding this inadequate chapter: 
The gospel of Christ that so exalts and beautifies 
human lives is not a spent force. A voice whispers 
to my inner ear: The heaven that is being pre- 
pared for such as these is worth striving for. 



OUR JEWISH FRIENDS. 



OUR JEWISH FRIENDS. 

THE greatest name of antiquity was Moses, 
a Jew. The greatest name of our dispen- 
sation is Saul of Tarsus, a Jew. The 
iXreatest names amoncr the financiers of 
this generations are the Rothschilds, who 
are Jews. The One Name that is above every 
name is that of the Galilean Jesus, a Jew. They 
are the chosen people. Reject the supernatural 
element in their history, and you \\ill find it inex- 
plicable. That history could no more have been 
invented by human agency than could such a na- 
tionality have been created by it.* The history of 
this people is an indisputable record of w^onders 
past and a prophecy of wonders to come in God's 
own time and way. Blindness, we know, has 
happened to Israel in part on their spiritual side. 
But there is no other race that keeps up more fully 
with the procession on secular lines of modern 
progress. The promise of their coming into the 
Church of Christ spans their stormy sky as a bow 
of hope. When that event takes place, it will be 
the crowning event in the process of the world's 
evangelization. Here and there some are coming 
in from time to time, and everywhere there seems 
to be an inquiring and receptive spirit spreading 
among them of all classes; including the rabbis, 
that minister at their altars; the teachers, who hold 
places in our institutions of learning; the mer- 
chants, who get their full share of the trade that is 
going on, not excepting the transactions of the 
stock exchange, where all sorts of men in this our 
day are making haste to be rich, and where so 

(199) 



200 Sunset Views. 

many of them find the warnings of the old Book 
are justified by the resuh. The divine providence 
that took Moses and Saul and Jesus from this 
race knew what it was doing. The assurance that 
in the fullness of the Gentiles these Hebrew chil- 
dren shall be *' grafted in" means nothing less 
than that they shall be an integral part of the living 
Church, and that will mean nothing less than the 
arrival of the latter-day jubilee for the kingdoms 
of this world. 

The " Zionist Movement," so called, is a 
significant feature of our times. It indicates that 
the promise that the chosen people " shall return 
to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
heads " is still firmly believed, and causes some of 
us to think that one of these bright mornings, not 
far off, the living generation of men on the earth 
will wake up and find that the thing has been 
done. Then will be broken the back of unbelief. 
Doubters will then be ready to join in the song: 
**The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let 
the multitude of isles be glad thereof." 

There is no room for us to disbelieve the ac- 
counts that are coming to us of the cruelties 
against the Jews by the Russian authorities. Those 
Russians are making a record that they will have 
to answer for. They are sowing bitter wrongs; 
they will reap retribution accordingly. If they 
could escape, they would be the first on record. 
The living God has something to do with living 
men and nations. He has reminded us that those 
that made Israel a spoil were themselves spoiled, 
and those that led them into captivity were them- 
selves carried into captivity. In the sight of the 
nations of the earth, it will be seen again that '* He 
that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor 
sleep." He will, to use his own expression, 



Our Jcii'ish J^^n'cuds. 201 

**make bare his arm." Tliat is to say, the devout 
and intelHgent spectator of current events will rec- 
ognize in them the v^'ork of God just as truly as 
he sees the marks of his doings in the history of 
earlier times. The fifty-tirst and fifty-second 
chapters of Isaiah strike a note that yield sweet 
music to the heart of a believer: *' The redeemed 
of the Lord shall return, and come with sinirinii 
unto Zion ; and everlasting joy shall be upon their 
head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and 
sorrow and mourning shall flee away. ' ' This flgure 
of speech cannot mean less than that the long and 
troubled night of delay will pass, and the glad 
morning will dawn. There are streaks in the 
eastern sky now visible. A glad song will soon 
be sung by a glad world as promised. 



SUNSET VIEWS AT SEABREEZE. 



SUNSET VIEWS AT SEABREEZE. 

SEABREEZE is a city in Florida of surpass- 
ing beauty. It has the sea on one side and 
an arm of the sea on the other. The arm 
of the sea is so extended and so riverhke 
that it was named Hahfax River, in remem- 
brance of an EngHshman who could talk and trade 
and diplomatize, whose name has been given to 
rivers, cities, counties, and entire provinces in 
America. It is no wonder that they named the 
place Seabreeze. Situated as it is, it gets the sea 
air, no matter which way the wind blows. It 
comes in through the south window of my room 
this February day, gently rustling the curtains and 
bringing to our ears the mocking bird's song, that 
stirs within us thoughts both sweet and sad, like 
the song itself. Men and women who had money 
and taste (in some cases crankiness) have come 
here and laid off a city with broad avenues, built 
residences of palatial splendor and cottages of 
every style of beauty, leaving the live oaks, the 
pines, and the palms, and all the semi-tropical 
flora in its wild loveliness, just a little tamed b}^ 
man's training touch, the sea moss clinging to the 
gnarled and twisted limbs of the trees, the birds in 
full chorus singing their songs, the same as they 
did before civilization and newspapers were ever 
heard of on our planet. Beauty, beauty every- 
where, around, above, below ! This is Seabreeze. 
The sunset views at Seabreeze are notable for 
two things: vividness and vastness. On the land- 
ward side is the richness of the colorino-. The 
sunset clouds look like chariots of fire drawn by 

(205) 



2o6 Sufiscl Views. 

steeds of flame. Intensity belongs to this region, 
where the flowers literally bloom nearly all the 
time, and the beams ever shine or nearly so. The 
sunset sky, as we see it across the broad, bright 
river, is wondrous in its beauty. The slanting 
sunbeams turn the blue waters of the river into 
silver and gold, shining like the apocalyptic sea of 
glass. The red glow of the lower sky gradually 
fades into fainter colors higher up, until in mid- 
heaven the white masses of the clouds hang like 
tents in which might be encamped all the heavenly 
hosts. The crowning effect of the sunsetting at 
Seabreeze is seen when the crimson globe in the 
sky duplicates itself in the water. These sunset 
views at Seabreeze might stagger the Muse of 
John Milton or strike the greatest landscape 
painter with despair. As I am neither a poet nor 
a painter, the friendly reader will not be over- 
critical. 

On the oceanward side is the vastness. The 
ocean is the biggest thing on earth. This is our 
first thought when we look upon it. This is a fa- 
vorite theme of the poets. The Psalmist speaks 
of the goodness of God as being like **this great 
and wide sea." No other figure of speech would 
express it so well. The sweetest organ tones of 
Faber roll out in the song that celebrates "the 
wideness of God's mercy like the wideness of the 
sea." Great and wide — these are the right words. 
Its wideness stretches away and away as we look 
upon it, until it seems to be lost in illimitabifity. 
Its greatness overwhelms us as we stand on the 
beach at Seabreeze and watch the breakers as 
they come rolling in with their combing beauty 
and thunderings that shake the solid earth beneath 
our feet. Gazing along this shore line of forty 
miles of beach, we seem to catch the rh3'thm of its 



Sioisct Viczi's at Seabreeze. 207 

everlasting roll. The strength of the sea is ours, 
and we feel as if we might have taken part in the 
sono; when the mornin<r stars san<r toj^ether and all 
the sons of God shouted for joy. 

As I write these last words my soul is pervaded 
witli a gracious consciousness that, through the 
mercy of God, as a child of God, I may hope to 
join in the nobler, sweeter song that celebrates his 
power to save. Other sunset view^s open to the eye 
of faith. I see that " city of God," and think of 
the meaning of the words that describe it. The 
familiar su^fcrestion comes to mind: If God has 
made so beautiful this world in which we now live, 
what will it be in the city of the Great King? It is 
a place, not merely a state. It is more real than 
these things that perish with the using can be. It 
is described in the Bible as " a city that hath foun- 
dations." This means something worth the tell- 
ing, but we know not specially what it is. The 
main idea is stability, and that is the chief thing. 
That is what we long for. What we long for we 
shall get; what we get we shall keep. This suf- 
fices. The negative side of what is promised is 
given in the words of the old song w^hich says that 
there *' sickness, sorrow, pain, and death are felt 
and feared no more." The positive side includes 
all we could ask: the promise is that no good thing 
shall be withheld. If children, then heirs, "heirs 
of God, and joint heirs with Christ" — these are 
the very words of that promise. What it means is 
more than we can take in now: all good things, 
beginning with the Lord himself, who is our por- 
tion. 

The sunset views given me here at Seabreeze 
might dazzle and blind me but for the fact that I 
have been vouchsafed a fuller perception of the 
fatherhood of God and of the brotherhood of 



2oS Sunset Viezvs. 

Christ. The heirship and joint heirship mean 
everything that is hirge and histing. There is 
room for all and love for all. The gates of that 
city of God shall not be shut at all by day, and 
there is no night there. Forever with the Lord 
and with one another — that is the promise. Where 
he is, there we shall be also. The apostle tells us : 
"Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him." (i Thess. iv. 14.) Does this mean 
recognition? To me in my sunset view it looks 
that wa}^; and we may be sure that we shall know 
more, and not love less, up there. If I get safe 
home, I hope to meet some who have helped me on 
the way. May I hope to meet some that I have 
helped? If I carry with me thither the human 
heart that throbs within me now, there is one face 
the missing of which would cast a shadow upon 
the brightness of the place. Away with the 
thought. 

My sunset views at Seabreeze this sweet Sab- 
bath da}', when the sunshine is on river and sea, 
kindle a glow in my soul that strengthens my hope 
that I shall not fail to reach that home prepared 
for the family of God. Old friends that have 
**read after me" for a long time will lift for me a 
prayer as they read what is herein written. 



THE NOVEL-READING PEST. 
14 



THE NOVEL-READING PEST. 

IT was said by Lamartine : "The novel may 
become the opium of the West." The more 
the thoughtful reader thinks of it, the more 
serious will this matter become. 

Novels, novels, novels! Novels day and 
night, novels all the week, novels on Sunday. 
Novels that are sinister, novels that are silly. 
Novels that whet the appetites, novels that inflame 
the passions. Novels that furnish the feeble- 
minded the literary diet that confirms their morbid- 
ness and perpetuates their imbecility. The out- 
put of new English novels is said to be four or 
five daily for every day in the year. Notwith- 
standing the fact that so many of them are vile 
and silly, outraging decency and overtaxing cre- 
dulity, they somehow find publishers and readers 
in unexpected quarters. Not long ago several 
booksellers in one of our largest cities were in- 
dicted and fined for selling obscene books — mostly 
translations from the French. Impure they were 
admitted to be, but they were also bright and 
scholarly, it w^as contended, and therefore to be 
tolerated. The old-fashioned presiding judge, we 
were glad to see, took a different view of the 
matter. 

The habitual novel reader — the mental opium 
eater — reaches a degree of imbecility almost be- 
yond description. The blood-and-thunder novel 
cannot be made too silly for its patrons, any more 
than the confirmed opium eater can satisfy him- 
self by indulging his unnatural appetite for the 
drug that has ruined him. The novel reader did 

(211) 



212 Sunset Viezvs. 

not start on this line with the intention to go so 
far. The novel that is mixed in its quality — 
with heroic incident or generous sentiment on one 
page, and falseness and foulness on another — is 
the novel that should be prohibited with a vigilance 
that does not sleep and a determination that does 
not falter. In 1879 I said: ''It is a fact that 
hundreds of thousands of our youths of both sexes 
have placed within their reach a sort of literature 
that is calculated to teach them that lust, murder, 
and theft are normal conditions of human life, and 
that purity, love, and honor are only obsolete su- 
perstitions to be laughed at by the gay and pitied 
by the wise. It is a fact that this literature is sap- 
ping the foundations of social virtue in this coun- 
try, lowering the moral standard of the mature, 
and infusing deadly poison into the minds of the 
young. It is a fact that good men and women 
seem to be asleep, doing nothing to arrest this 
monstrous evil, and in many places actually pat- 
ronizing these poisonous publications. It is a fact 
that you may meet some of the worst books in 
some of the best families." 

What I said then I would say now as to the rem- 
edy for this deadly evil. The remedy is a home 
censorship. Every head of a family can and ought 
to assume the office of a censor. Let every 
mother and father see to it that none but clean lit- 
erature enters their houses. Let every good cit- 
izen see to it that not a dollar of his money goes 
for publications that pander to depraved tastes 
and prurient curiosity. The withdrawal by the 
respectable element of society of their patronage 
from all publications save those whose pages are 
pure would do much to mitigate this great evil. 
The purveyors of corrupt literature would be left 
to be supported by such as stand on their own 



The Novel- Reading Pest . 213 

low moral level. Look to your libraries, and cast 
from your homes these serpents that coil in your 
bookshelves or upon your center tables. Thus 
may be maintained in our favored land the free- 
dom of the press with the conservation of its bless- 
ings in fullest measure. 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 



AT one time I found myself sliding into an 
ugly habit — the habit of watching to de- 
tect the blemishes and weaknesses of my 
brethren. I awoke to the realization of 
the fact that this habit was growing on me, 
and that it was doing me harm. About this time 
one day I happened to hear a remark from a big- 
framed, deep-voiced brother toward whom I had 
(perhaps to a large extent unconsciously) suf- 
fered myself to indulge a growing coolness. On 
the occasion referred to he was speaking to 
another party of the conduct of a mutual ac- 
quaintance who had, so it seemed, an undue 
eagerness in exposing the weakness of another 
person who belonged to his own circle and for 
whom he professed friendship. I was not eaves- 
dropping the conversation, but I could not avoid 
the hearing of this remark from my large and 
loud brother: "There was no good purpose to 
be effected by his exposure of a brother's error; 
and considering their relations to each other, he 
ought rather to have felt like going backward and 
spreading over him a covering to hide his infirmity." 
That was the substance of what he said, and there 
was an expression on his face and an emphasis in 
his tone that impressed me deeply. Then and 
there I got a new view of this man and a better 
feeling toward him until his sudden death brought 
out facts that revealed to me why it was that he 
had so many and such warm friends among good 
men and women. In him there was a strain of 

(217) 



2l8 Sunset l^iczvs. 

genuine magnanimity that found expression when 
it was in order. 

A man may persuade himself that he is a pubHc 
censor when he is onl}^ a common scold. Think- 
ing this matter over, I concluded that it would be 
both safer and pleasanter for me to spend more 
time in self-examination, and in trying to do some 
good for all the persons I could reach in any way, 
than in picking flaws in the record and character 
of my fellow-men. 

Among the notable men in the Church there was 
one who, as he increased in years and grew in 
reputation, reminded me more and more of the ex- 
pression used in the Second Epistle of Peter and 
the Epistle of Jude describing persons who in- 
dulged in "great swelling words of vanity." That 
meant that they were pretentious persons. Now, 
this man of whom I am here speaking did actually 
seem to "swell" wdth conscious self-importance 
and a sense of superiority to his brethren. His 
manner was an offense unto me and others. Aft- 
erwards it so happened that we were thrown to- 
gether more intimately, and I discovered that the 
deepening of his chest tones was owing to a phys- 
ical rather than a spiritual cause : it was owing to 
the fact that he was growing in fatness as he grew 
in years. From this same cause he was made to 
look unduly pompous and aggressive. Knowing 
him thenceforth as he was, taking some pains to 
get closer to him for the Master's sake, I learned 
how I had misjudged a good man. He was guile- 
less as a child. He did not seek the chief places 
in the synagogue, some of which were given to 
him ; but he was ready at all times to bear the 
heaviest burden or the bitterest cross. His heart 
was true, his gifts were rich and varied; and he 
had a capacity for winning affection for himself 



A More Excellent Way. 219 

that no cold-blooded idolater of self or *' swelling " 
mass of verbosity and vainglory ever possessed. 
In my association with him I got for myself an in- 
terpretation of John vii. 24: '* Judge not accord- 
ing to the appearance, but judge righteous judg- 
ment." 

Among my acquaintances in a certain place 
there was a high-spirited, great-hearted woman 
who was a vicarious sufferer, thus sharing the fate 
that has overtaken so many elect spirits in this 
strange w^orld. Circumstances not necessary to 
mention made social intercourse between this lady 
and myself infrequent and formal. Acting under 
the impulse mentioned in the opening of this chap- 
ter, one day I made her a visit with a chosen text 
of Scripture in my mind, and with a great desire 
in my heart for the blessing of God. She received 
me with ladylike civility, but not very warmly. I 
delivered the message I had brought from the 
word of God, told her how I felt, and then we 
kneeled and prayed together. It was the gate of 
heaven ! The blessing asked for came. Thence- 
forth there was no shadow of cloud between her 
soul and mine. When w^e parted at the gate, the 
look was on her face which I hope to see when w^e 
meet inside that city w^hose gates are never shut 
by day or by night. The traits of the gracious 
personality I looked for in this fine-toned sufferer 
I found. 

The new world of friendly optimism that opened 
to me with the entrance of the thought mentioned 
at the opening of this chapter is as bright as the 
morning hills beneath unclouded skies. 



MONl:Y-.\UKI:i-'S. 



MONEY-MAKERS. 

THE money-making gift is just as distinctly 
a gift from God as any other. There is 
no more reason why a man should make a 
selfish use of this gift than that he should 
make a selfish use of the gift of muscular 
strencrth. It is as bad to cheat a brother as it is to 
beat him. Abraham, the richest man of his gen- 
eration, was " the friend of God " in a sense spe- 
cially gracious. The beggar who died at the rich 
man's gate in another age of the world was carried 
by the angels to Abraham's bosom as a special to- 
ken of God's favor, and as a proof that the rich 
and the poor may be equally the objects of his love. 
In my boyhood days I knew a boy who had the 
money-making gift, and exercised it in a way that 
was amusing. He loved to trade, and was always 
ready to sell anything he had, or to swap pocket 
knives, marbles, fishing tackle, firearms, or any- 
thing belonging to him. Invariably he got the 
best of all his trading. When he got through with 
a series of these exchanges with another boy, the 
rule was that he had all, and the other had noth- 
ing. When that boy wnth the money-making gift 
grew up to manhood, he opened a store in the vil- 
lage where he lived; he cultivated a farm, and 
made steady gains from both store and farm, en- 
larging their operations until before middle age he 
had absorbed the most of what had belonged to all 
his neighbors. He was a money-maker only. He 
had no public spirit; he had no philanthropy.. He 
never married, giving as his reason for choosing 



2 24 Sunset Views, 

the unmarried state the fact that it was more eco- 
nomical. He never made a reHgious profession — 
largely, no doubt, for the same reason. He made 
money, and was satisfied therewith — and when he 
died he dropped out of sight and was forgotten. 

I knew a black man, a slave on a Southern plan- 
tation in the old days, who was a money-maker. 
He was Uncle Cato, classically named after the 
fashion of that time and region. He was richly 
equipped for his vocation as a money-maker. He 
worked a tobacco patch on his own account, and 
by an infallible instinct knew when was the best 
time to sell his crop for the highest price. He 
reared poultry to sell, and had what seemed to be 
the happiest luck therein. His week day nights 
and his Sundays he utilized in the manufacture of 
wooden ware with his own hands, which had a 
sure selling quality, and which he always sold 
for cash. On what was thought to be his death- 
bed he revealed to a black woman who had been 
kind to him in his sickness the spot where he had 
secreted his hoarded treasures. But rallying 
somewhat subsequently, he found that he had 
strength enough to rise from his bed, hurry forth, 
and remove his treasure to another spot, where it 
was never found. The old black money-maker's 
secret died with him. 

I knew in California a man who was a money- 
maker whose methods seemed to be as unfailing 
as they were unique. He dealt mainly in mines 
and mining stocks. Though of limited education, 
his transactions were conducted on a scale so 
large that the average financiers with whom he 
dealt grew dizzy in dealing with him. " I don't 
know how it is," he once said to me in a familiar 
talk, "but when I see a body of ore of any sort, 
something always tells me what it is; and I have 



Mon ey-AIakcrs . 225 

never yet been misled." He was a money-maker 
truly. Some persons who knew him said he had 
genius. When he died he left so many millions 
of dollars that to guess at the figures might expose 
one to the suspicion of lunacy. 

I knew another man in California w^io quietly 
got possession of the sources of water supply for 
a big city, and coined money so swiftly and on a 
scale so large that the story of it would read like 
a tale of magic. He w^as a money-maker, and 
seemed to be satisfied with handling his millions 
upon millions until he had to let go in death, and 
the law divided them among the legatees. In the 
litigation that took place after his death it was 
shown that the largest money-maker may be to the 
last degree a friendless and lonely man. 

I knew a man who happened to hit upon a name 
that was so felicitous for a much-used article of 
diet that the first thing he knew the sale of it went 
far beyond anything he had looked for. He was 
a money-maker of the genuine stamp. The more 
he got the more he wanted. He wtxs a money- 
maker, and was satisfied to be only that. He kept 
a steady gait until he died, and was grasping for 
more when the end came. 

I have known other money-makers who seemed 
to be acting according to John Wesley's advice: 
"Make all you can; save all you can; give all 
you can." Doubtless the most of these persons 
had made a study of Bible-teaching on this subject 
of money-making. It is likely that they had taken 
to heart that pointed saying: *' The love of money 
is the root of all evil." They understood it to 
mean that there is no form of wroncrdoino; or follv 
that may not be called into action through this pas- 
sion, the love of money. In reading the history of 
the Church and of the world the}' saw abundant il- 



2 26 SlUlSCt I 



' lezus. 



lustrations of the truth of the saying. Looking 
around them upon the living world, and looking 
into their own hearts, they saw that it was a matter 
of the deepest personal concern to each and all. 
They were affected solemnly by the saying of our 
Lord himself, that it would be '' easier for a camel 
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." In 
view of this saying, they asked: "Who then can 
be saved? " The consummate wisdom of the an- 
swer they had considered. That answer did not 
lessen the terribleness of the warnincr on the one 
hand, nor did it furnish any ground for a mere 
money-maker to hope for heaven on easier terms. 
But it magnified the grace of God in reminding us 
that it was equal to the accomplishment of even this 
miracle — the miracle of saving a rich man who 
deals honestly with himself and with God. Such 
a man is encouraged to believe that he can " make 
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness;" he 
is comforted with the assurance that there is no 
necessity that he should set his heart upon increas- 
ing riches. With God this is a possibility — but 
how difficult, and how rarely realized, God only 
knows.. Read the entire passage in i Timothy vi. 9, 
10: *' But they that will be rich fall into tempta- 
tion and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful 
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdi- 
tion. For the love of money is the root of all 
evil: which while some coveted after, they have 
erred from the faith, and pierced themselves 
through with many sorrows." As I read the 
words I recall the wrecks I have met in the circle 
where all that makes human lives worth living has 
been sold for money. Those that have escaped 
have cause for eternal gratitude. 



TOM REED. 



TOM REED. 



TIIEY made him Speaker of the House of 
Representatives. They talked of him for 
President of the United States of America. 
But he died one day, and is now remem- 
bered more on account of the pleasantries 
that still circulate in his name than because of any 
great measures of statesmanship that he fathered. 
Physically he looked as sound and ruddy as a 
Rhode Island greening apple. He enjoyed his 
own jokes to the utmost. His humor was of the 
contagious sort: he set a fashion for almost the en- 
tire political world. He was good nature itself. 
Because of him there is a gentler and brighter 
tone to this hour in all the political circles of this 
land. *'From California, did you say?'' so he 
said to me when introduced to him by Congress- 
man Gaines, of Tennessee. '* Go right up to my 
place in the gallery, take possession in California's 
name, and stay as long as you choose." Whether 
or not he meant all he said, it was very pleasant 
for the time being, and makes a pleasant memory 
in perpetuity. Whenever I see an allusion to Tom 
Reed in our periodical literature, his mighty frame 
seems to tower close by and the warmth of his 
greeting comes back in a way that renews his 
title to the epithet, prince of good fellows. 

Patriotism of the unchangingly hopeful and op- 
timistic type was constitutional with Tom Reed. 
He " enjoyed himself," literally. He enjo3^ed his 
eating and drinking. Throughout the social cir- 
cles he touched he diffused a spirit so mellow and 

(229) 



230 Suns^ I7ezc's. 

shed a light so bright that he became more and 
more a distinct and fascinating element in the life 
of our capital city. The Californians were very 
fond of Tom Reed. He was a man after their 
own heart. He was continually doing good by 
stealth. Under cover of a gentle satire, at which 
the victim himself was compelled to smile, the 
burly philosopher would conceal his neighborly 
tracks. Which is the same as to say that Tom 
Reed was one of those wholesome, sunshiny men 
that help to leaven successive generations with the 
leaven of a humanness that makes it worth while 
to know them and helps to relegate misanthropy 
and cynicism to the weakest and wickedest souls 
that groan and grovel in the darkness in which 
they enwrap their lives. 



OUR NEW YEAR MOTTO. 



OUR NEW YEAR MOTTO. 



SOMETIME ago it was proposed in our 
Nashville Preachers' Meeting to adopt as 
its motto for 1905 the words: "Let broth- 
erly love continue." The response was 
hearty and unanimous. A sweet and ten- 
der feeling seemed to pervade the service. Two 
of our brethren who were present and voted for 
the adoption of this motto for the new year — 
Brothers Barbee and Amis — have since left us. 
They now know more of what it means than ever 
before. They feel more of the joy of unbroken 
fellowship. If they could now speak to us across 
the silence and m^'stery, tender and solemn would 
be their w^ords. The two worlds touch in my med- 
itations this New Year's morning as I look from 
my window south upon these Tennessee hills, i\nd 
think of what it is to be at home in the fairer 
clime on high, seen by the eye of faith. 

But stop a moment! It may be that some of us 
need another word first. It may be that some of 
us have taken with us into the new year aliena- 
tions, coldnesses, misjudgments, " envyings," or 
suchlike. We are ""reat self-deceivers. Without 

o 

watchfulness and prayer we are liable to yield to 
such temptations, with which we shall assuredly 
be assailed. The ''other word" needed first to 
be spoken to us may be this: Let brotherly love 
be received as the gift of God, or in. its renewal. 
Before continuance comes impartation. To talk 
of the continuance of brotherly love to one who 
has never felt it is to speak in an unknown tongue ; 

(233) 



234 Siciiscl Viczvs. 

to speak of its continuance to one who has lost it 
is to miss the word in season for that soul. The 
w^ord in season for all such persons was spoken by 
the Master himself: " If thou bring thy gift to the 
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
aught against thee ; leave there thy gift before the 
altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy 
brother, and then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. 
V. 23, 24. ) Lord Jesus, help us to lay these words 
of thine to heart at this time, when we are making 
our Christmas offerings and New Year's resolu- 
tions ! 

The point is, do not hesitate or delay to make 
the first overture toward reconciliation or closer 
fellowship. Do not stand on any notion of dignity 
that may be sacrificed. Do not hold back from 
making advance approaches for fear of meeting a 
rebuff. Do not fail to act upon these most gra- 
cious impulses from a dread of being misunder- 
stood and misrepresented . All such flimsy excuses 
should be laid aside; all such inferior motives 
should be swept aw^ay as by the breath of the Lord. 
I knew two brethren, ministers of the gospel, who 
differed in temperament and opinion to such an 
extent as to make their intercourse constrained 
and cold. One of these brethren, thinking some 
such thoughts as are herewith suggested, resolved 
that he would seek a closer approach and sweeter 
fellowship. The result was a surprise and a bless- 
ing for both. There w^as a little dubiousness at 
first, but it melted away in the warmth of personal 
association. They found that they could work 
together for the cause they loved ; that they could 
rejoice together with them that rejoiced, and weep 
together with them that wept. They found agree- 
ment in the essential truths of religion, and no oc- 
casion to discuss any matter of difference. They 



Our Neiv Tear Motto. 235 

felt the peace of God, whose banner o^•er them 
was love. More and more tlieir hearts were at- 
tuned for the fellowship of the militant Church, 
to be renewed tlirough grace abiding and abound- 
ing in the world of spirits. And another result 
seemed to follow, in fulfillment of the scriptural 
declaration : " We know that we have passed from 
death unto life, because we love the brethren." 
The currents of a heavenly life pour into souls 
thus opened in floods that fill them to overflow^- 
ing. The new life becomes more and more a pos- 
itive experience ; the}' know, they feel, they testify. 
Brotherly love established and continuing means 
all this : the influx of the love of God that is full 
and free, the witness of the Spirit to the blessed 
fact, and a growth in all the elements of spiritual 
life in the Church of God. 

Pass on the motto for the new year, the watch- 
word all along the lines: "Let brotherly love 
continue I " 



THE FUTURE SAFE. 



THE FUTURE SAFE. 



THE past at least is safe " — so wrote a friend 
to another at a time when at a distance 
from each other there seemed to be dan- 
ger of misunderstanding. To them the 
past was very sacred, and it proved to 
be indeed very safe. They had every reason for 
cherishing the friendship which had given them 
strength and joy so many years. They saw and 
felt that they had not the shadow of reason for 
alienation. The result was, that they clasped 
hands in a fresh covenant and their hearts flowed 
together in the fullness of a joy too deep for words. 
Friendship means more to them now than ever 
before. 

Another thought comes to me with such force 
that it asks expression. It is the future that is safe. 
All the future belongs to us all. In a sense deeper, 
with a meaning fuller than we usually realize, we 
accept the word of God: *' Now is the accepted 
time." Blunders, delays, backslidings, losses you 
may have had. You may be despondent; and if 
despondent, you are weak. A disheartened man 
repels the help he needs, and invites the enemy 
he has most cause to dread and shun. The word 
I have in my heart for every reader is this: The 
future is yours. Knock, and its door of hope will 
open to you now. You will not fail if you will 
only try: your Helper is almighty. But your case 
is peculiar, you say? Yes, my friend; every case 
is peculiar. We know very little of each other, 
but every heart is open to Ilim with whom we have 
to do. Whatever may be your past experience, 

(239) 



240 Sunset Vicvjs. 

trust and try and your future is safe. There is no 
provision for doubt in this gospel, and among the 
multiphed miUions of human souls, each with its 
special needs, not one is exempted from its gra- 
cious opportunity. Your future is safe if you will 
have it so. Our gospel is a glad gospel. It is the 
future that may be safe for us all. 



BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS. 

i6 



BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS. 

IF I should live another week (August 24, 
1904), I shall celebrate my seventy-tifth birth- 
day. Naturally I have had some serious and 
solemn reflections concerning death. More 
than once its mystery has seemed to be at 
hand for me. Let me think aloud through this 
medium for a little while, expressing three thoughts 
that are in my mind. 

1. Death is inevitable. Every succeeding birth- 
day brings it nearer. But what consolation is 
there in this fact of the certainty of death? Just 
this: That it is the part of wisdom to accept the 
inevitable wnth all possible submission. 

2. Death is the only portal that opens for us 
into higher and happier conditions. It is but 
another and necessary step in the progress of 
our being. There is a law here: Death is neces- 
sary to progress. The more study we give to the 
subject, the farther we look, the more w^e shall be 
struck with the evidences of the operation of this 
law on this plane of being. 

3. The operation of this law terminates with 
this state of being here on earth. Some re- 
cent philosophers, so called, have suggested that 
there may be many deaths and births to the same 
spirit. I am glad that a voice from heaven has 
spoken, telling us that death cannot follow us 
thither. O, blessed be God for this truth! If 
there were no other revelation in the Bible, I would 
be ready to fall down and worship God, who hath 
brought life and immortality to light in the gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. It sounds like celestial 

(M3) 



2^4 Sttnset Views. 

music in the depths of my soul as I read the words : 
*' I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Be- 
hold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he 
will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, 
and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow^ nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain : for the former things are passed away." 
(Rev. xxi. 3, 4.) 

This is about the sum of my birthday reflections. 
Knowledge without . ignorance ; pleasure without 
pain ; progress without intermission ; life beyond 
the reach of death. All this beyond a doubt, and 
not far off. These reflections make a birthday 
that is both glad and solemn for me. 



MARK HANNA ASTONISHED. 



MARK HANNA ASTONISHED. 

THE one interview I had with the one and 
only Mark Hanna 1 have never forgotten. 
It was during the second campaign of 
WilHam McKinley for the Presidency of 
these United States. Mr. Hanna was chair- 
man of the National Committee of his party. Per- 
haps no other man in the nation kept his finger so 
nicely laid on the pulses of political parties as Mr. 
Hanna. He said but little concerning practical 
politics, but from time to time dropped an expres- 
sion that indicated that he knew all the mysteries 
of that sort of patriotism that gets its expenses 
paid from the office seekers or office holders. He 
was a likable man as he appeared to me that day. 
What a comfortable, thick-set, deep-chested, fun- 
loving, sharp-sighted man he was ! He w^as a stu- 
dent of human nature, and he enjoyed the game 
he was plaving. It seemed almost impossible that 
the news of his death, not long afterwards, could 
be true. Vitality radiated from his personality at 
every point. He was on his way to Thomasville, 
Ga., where he had passed the previous winter. 
He was making a special study of the negro ques- 
tion en the ground in their very midst. He was 
free to admit that as yet he had the very alphabet 
of this question to learn. The scenes he witnessed 
during the protracted and rather boisterous reli- 
gious excitement in the leading colored congrega- 
tion of Thomasville he recited with much animation. 
Night after night he went to the church where the 
meeting w^as held, took a seat in the gallery, and 
looked on with ever-increasing astonishment at the 

(-47) 



2^8 SiDisct Vi'ezc's. 

fluency of the speakers, the fervor of the prayers, 
the melody of the songs, and the picturesqueness 
of the tableaux exhibited in their bodily exercises. 
''They actually climbed the pillars that supported 
the galleries of that church, so great was their ex- 
citement," said Mr. Hanna. I narrated to him 
some of my own experiences in the capacity of 
pastor or assistant pastor of colored Churches in 
Macon and Savannah. He listened with every 
appearance of genuine interest. His face glowed, 
and he punctured my narration with observations 
that show^ed a specially ready grasp of all the 
points in the negro problem that touched the foun- 
tains of feeling or of mirth in his nature. Mark 
Hanna had no element of fanaticism in his com- 
position. Had he lived, he would have brought to 
bear in national affairs a shrewd, cool conservatism 
that would have been a potent factor in the pro- 
motion of the generous policy now so happily 
prevailing and increasing in all parts of our re- 
united nation. It would seem that Mark Hanna 
ought to have lived. If ever I saw a man that 
seemed to be planned and built for long life, he 
was that man — with a powerful physical constitu- 
tion, and the philosophic, easy-going temper to 
match. When I expressed the satisfaction I felt, 
in common with all sorts of Tennesseeans, at the 
appointment by President McKinley of Gen. 
Luke Wright to office in the Phihppines, Mr. 
Hanna seemed to run over with joy. He did not 
conceal from me the fact that the policy of which 
General Wright's appointment was a part w^as 
adopted with his hearty concurrence, and would 
be upheld by him with enthusiasm against all op- 
posers, should opposers show themselves anywhere 
within the lines of his party. Mark Hanna was 
astonished at himself, seeing how much he had to 



jMark JIaiuia Aslonishcd. 249 

learn concerning this negro question with regard 
to which the average American poHtician is in the 
habit of claiming infalhbihty and dashing forward 
with all the confidence begotten of ignorance. 
And he was one of a class, already large and rap- 
idly increasing, a class that had eliminated the 
larger part of the difficulty of its settlement by 
simply holding that rational and friendly methods 
of adjustment were within reach. Rational and 
friendly — these are the words that flowed from my 
pen point. And this is my testimony as a Christian 
man, as a citizen of a great nation whose brightest 
chapters of history we may hope are yet to be 
written. 



OUR IRISH FRIENDS. 



OUR IRISH FRIENDS. 



THERE is nothing going on in this world 
worthy of notice, good or bad, that our 
Irish friends have not a hand in it. They 
have had places in the pictures whenever 
and wherever the champions of liberty 
have been painted. They are good fighters, more 
than ready to enter the lists when the occasion 
comes. Many of them, in the language of an 
Irish historian, *'w^ould rather die martyrs than 
live saints." It was a typical Irishman who, when 
questioned as to the origin of a contusion on his 
head, replied: "I have had a discussion — wid 
sticks." That was the kind of controversy sought 
by the Irishman of the old school who at fair time 
expressed the hope that *'some jintleman would 
be kind enough to tr-r-ead on his coat tail." 

The Irishman is Kkewise a lively voter. But it 
is a slander to say that his motto with regard to the 
suffrage is *' early and often." The long strug- 
gle the Irish have made for their political rights in 
the old country has taught them that eternal vig- 
ilance is the price of liberty, and led them to see 
to it that their civil privileges are not left to be 
measured out to them or w^ithheld from them at 
the option of any other class of fellow-citizens. 
The Irishman has a hand in all that transpires in 
America. If he knows anything, he knows polit- 
ical economy. His native gift of eloquence is as- 
tonishing. Rouse him at midnight, with only one 
eye half open, and call on him for a patriotic ebul- 
lition, and you will find that he is able and willing 
to give a reason for the political faith he has es- 

(-53) 



25 f Sunset Views, 

poused. As an officeholder, he is not backward 
nor impracticable. Asa practical politician, he does 
his full share of the work of governing this coun- 
try. When a man is wanted to do full work for 
this party or that, and to meet with a bold 
front the approach of any enemy, they try to find 
an Irishman therefor. As a soldier of fortune, so 
called, the Irishman gets in place as soon as the 
first, and may be depended on to do what is pos- 
sible to courage and magnanimity. (If any reader 
is disposed to contend that among our Irish friends 
there are men who would have to be described in 
different language, so be it. These exceptions are 
all the more notable, because the Irishman is no 
halfway traveler, go which way he will.) 

Best of all, our Irish friends are doing the full- 
est share of the everyday toil that is subduing this 
continent to the reig^n of civilization. An Irish 
sot is now and then encountered: some Irishmen 
belong to that class of men who know for them- 
selves no middle ground between total abstinence 
and drunkenness. But an Irish loafer, the man 
who rusts out or dry rots in idleness, would be a 
strange discovery in most localities in our country. 
The typical Irishman is a busy man. Rather than 
be unemployed, he will at times even sell whisky 
or be a petty politician. The petty politician and 
the whisky seller are sometimes united in the 
same person: the two callings have affinities that 
are unmistakable. The aggregate result of this 
combination exhibits human nature at its very 
worst this side of the lowest depths. The venal 
politician and the vender of vile whisky or beer 
is restricted to no one nationality. And it remains 
true in general that the Irishman is a worker. 
Where they are grading railroad beds, you will 
find him; where they are quarrying stone, you 



Our Irish I^ricmh. 



255 



will find him ; where they are clearing the forest, 
you will find him; w^here they are herding cattle 
or sheep, you will find him; where they are driv- 
ing wheeled vehicles, you will find him; where 
pedagogy is going on in any of its grades, you will 
find him ; where they call for men to minister at 
the altars of the sanctuary for nominal pay, and 
with a glad heart, you will find him. 



TRANSFIGURED SINGERS. 



TRANSFIGURED SINGERS. 

IHxWE seen them and heard them from 
Hogan's Creek to the Golden Gate, from 
Morehead's Mill in North CaroHna to Mount 
Shasta in California. Through the grace of 
God, abiding and abounding, I hope to see 
millions of transfigured singers in one company, 
whose song we are told will celebrate the love 
that gave itself for us that w^e might know the 
power of Christ's resurrection and be made kings 
and priests unto God and his Father. The pic- 
tures of these transfigured singers are framed in 
tender and holy associations and are hung in the 
halls of memory. What our Heavenly Father 
thinks of music may be understood by calling to 
mind what he has said of it in connection with the 
worship and spiritual interests of his militant 
Church, and of the rapture and glory of the 
Church triumphant. God's love of music runs 
through every part of his physical creation, from 
the song of the mocking bird to the majestic roll 
of the breakers on the ocean's shore. 

One transfigured singer seen and heard by me 
in my boyhood I have never forgotten. It was at 
a funeral service on a bright Sunday morning, the 
burial of Uncle Tommy Weatherford, the patriarch 
of Methodism in all that Hogan's Creek country. 
He was a sturdy old saint, sweet-toned and strong, 
and his neighbors of all denominations and those 
of no denomination turned out to attend his burial. 
The house, which stood on the top of a high hill 
above the creek, was crowded, and the front 3'ard 
was filled with people. The preacher, Jehu Hank, 

(=59) 



26o Sunset Views. 

stood in the door and sang the famihar old hymn, 
" On Jordan's stormy banks I stand." He was a 
notable singer, and his name was a household 
word among that people. There was power in his 
voice and a wonderful clearness, and that subtle 
touch that takes hold of the hearts of listeners 
wherever it is met with. It was a literal transfig- 
uration to my boyish eyes, as he sang with shining 
face of the land where the flowers never fade, 
where there is everlasting spring, and in an ecstasy 
of holy enthusiasm he proclaimed as it were in a 
musical shout that from that shore he could not be 
frightened by death's cold flood. Not a word of 
the sermon do I remember: no doubt it was what 
a funeral sermon should be — sympathetic, tender, 
and sensible. But that song — from it I got the 
touch that transfigured the man of God as he sang, 
and its music has never left me during all the 
years that have intervened. 

Of George Eckley, the musical black prodigy 
of Macon in Georgia, I have spoken elsewhere. 
He was normally as homely as homeliness itself — 
squatty, with heavy features, flat nose, short fore- 
head and low, and eyes that in repose were inno- 
cent of any expression be3^ond what was merely 
animal. He was a transfigured singer never to be 
forgotten after you had once heard him. He led 
the singing among those Methodist negroes in Ma- 
con to whom I then held a sort of semipastoral 
relation. He carried everything with him as a 
leader in holy song. The volume of his voice was 
great, its melody had a quality and a charm that 
were all his own. He led, and all of that swarthy 
congregation followed both of necessity and from 
choice. Perfect in time, overwhelming in power, 
and almost miraculous in its effect, when his 
voice led nobody questioned his supremac}- as a 



Transfgurcd Singers. 261 



leader in the songs of Zion. He surely ** led " 
the singing of that dark-complexioned and enthu- 
siastic people who surely believed in a religion of 
melody here and of joy hereafter. Some of 
George Eckley's choruses are echoing in my 
memory now as I pen these lines fifty years after- 
w^ards. The chord that he struck never failed to 
respond. If he led in a penitential hymn, sin- 
ners would be softened and melted while he sang. 
If he sang of the joys of religion here on earth, 
or of the glories that awaited believers in heaven, 
the rapture that was in his song made it kindling 
and catching. He did not sing himself into ac- 
tual physical good looks: that was an impossibil- 
ity. But the swelling of his bosom under the 
afflatus of holy song, the shining of his black and 
homely face, the victorious sweep of his voice, 
the rapt expression of the whole man, wrought a 
visible change in him then and there that made it 
easy for all of us who then saw and heard him to 
lift our thought and faith to that world where that 
which is sown in weakness shall be raised in 
power. The transfiguration that awaits George 
Eckley and his dark-skinned fellow-worshipers in 
heaven will be a sight worth seeing. They will 
all be singers up there, and their music will be 
worth hearing. And as there will be nothing there 
to hurt or destroy, it will be good to be there, 
whether coming from the East or the West, the 
North or the South, or the isles of the sea. 

When I think or speak of transfigured sinners, 
the image of the gentle Clara Whitehurst comes 
before my mind. Child of music and of sorrow, 
her song on earth took the minor key before she 
left us to go up yonder to the home where there 
is no sorrow or pain, and where the discords of 
earth are past, and where the highest joys of 



26 z Siuiscl Vi'ezv 



s. 



which she sang while she w^as with us are glad re- 
alities. At my old McKendree class meetings in 
Nashville she was my helper in holy song. When 
music was prescribed as a regular part in the or- 
der of divine worship, it was an expression of a 
special mercy to souls like hers. Her mind was 
attuned to holy thought as truly as her voice was 
attuned to holy song. She loved to sing, and it 
gave her joy to express in song her love for God. 
She was always ready : her spiritual intuitions were 
so quick and so acute, and her knowledge of 
Christian h^^mnology was so extensive and accu- 
rate, that her little snatches of sacred song were 
invariably delightful and good to the use of edify- 
ing. A recipe for a good class meeting or other 
social Christian service of similar sort might be 
given here in words like these : A judicious choice 
of Holy Scripture, a common sense interpretation 
of it, a glow of spiritual fervor that infuses into 
all the attendants the same spirit, prayers in the 
same temper, and not too long, the whole inter- 
spersed with sacred song to match the sacred mean- 
ing, the purpose of the entire service. Under the 
influence of exercises like these, the whole of our 
company of Christian friends underwent a gen- 
uine transfiguration ; the lines made by care or toil 
or trouble of any sort were smoothed away, and 
the love of God in their trusting souls put into their 
mortal bodies something of what awaits them, as 
they fondly hope, w^here they will see the King in 
his beauty as the center and joy of the multitude 
of transfijjured sincrers that no man can number. 

In that same little band of Christian friends, the 
McKendree class meeting, there was another lady 
whose chief passion was a love of beauty. She 
was an artist who could put form and color into 
her visions or conceptions of the beautiful. Her 



Trausfgnrcd Singers. 263 

maiden surname was one honored in art circles 
everywhere. She was also a musician of unusual 
gifts. When under the afflatus of holy song she 
was a transligured believer. There was a look in 
her face and a tone in her voice that belonged to 
the unseen sphere that lies so close to tliis and yet 
is so truly a mystery to us all. Half playfully she 
once said to me in later years: *' When a child, I 
always wished to be a beautiful angel, and that 
wish is still in my heart." Bless that yearning, 
faithful spirit that held fast its early ideal and long- 
ing for the beauty that time can neither dim nor de- 
stroy ! She had been for many years an unceas- 
ing sufferer from bodily pain that had left its marks 
upon her body. But she remained true to her 
lofty ideal and holy desire, and already there was 
a partial fulfillment of her pra^'er. She is taking 
on a spiritual beauty that increases as she draws 
nearer to that spiritual realm. She has taken the 
prescription I have ventured in playful earnestness 
to offer to her and other elect souls who have been 
called to walk in this path of pain: *' Three parts 
of patience, and then — one more part of patience." 
The heaven of the Bible, the heaven of our hopes, 
is a heaven of beauty. Other members of that 
circle had the gift of music and the longing for 
beauty unmarred and unending. Their names 
are written in God's book of remembrance. 

Some readers may be inclined to smile w^hen 
they see here the name of Andrew M. Bailey 
among the names of the transfigured singers. The 
old Californians will call him to mind. He was a 
rugged, angular, self-assertive man, a w^onder to 
those early Californians, and an aggravation to 
many of them. I never knew a man who knew 
more certainly whom and what he did not like. I 
never knew a man w^ho had greater power of in- 



264 Snnscl llcws. 

dicating his dislikes by facial expression. There 
is something comic in the notion of the transfigura- 
tion of this old California pioneer preacher, 
Brother Andrew M. Bailey. But I have seen 
that miracle wrought. By common consent he led 
the singing at the Santa Clara camp meetings held 
away back in the fifties and sixties. That won- 
derful voice of his ! I seem to hear it as I write 
these words — clear as a bugle, sweet as a w^oman's. 
Acres of the early settlers, with their famihes, 
gathered under the evergreen oaks and the syc- 
amores on Sunday morning, would crowd around 
the ''preacher's stand" as closely as they could 
as, with eyes closed and swinging of the body, 
Brother Bailey sang of heaven. And as he sang 
of that " sun-bright clime," with its larger life, its 
reunions, its sacred memories, and its unending 
glories, the rugged features relaxed and seemed 
to catch a touch of the light from above. There 
was a transfigured singer! Men and women who 
remembered Kavanaugh and Welburn and Deer- 
ing and Browder and Morton and Linn, and the 
rest of the leaders and fathers of the Church in the 
old times and in their old homes " back in the 
States," were melted into tenderness under the 
spell of Bailey's song. Their children, seeing 
and hearing this transfigured singer, received 
gracious suggestions they can never lose. When 
Brother Bailey came to Nashville a few years ago 
he was an old man, worn and weary and scarred 
by the wounds received in hfe's battles. But he 
was chastened in look and speech. When he told 
me that his object in coming to Nashville was to 
make a gift of ten thousand dollars to the cause of 
missions, placing the money in the hands of the 
officers of the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, the Church of his first 



Transfigitred Singers. 265 

and his latest affection, I was listening to and look- 
ing upon a transfigured singer. 

This musical gift, the ability to make music, was 
not bestowed upon me. The love of it was given 
me in double measure. Once in Boston I tried to 
indicate to a Methodist pastor and some other 
clerical friends who were present with us in his 
study before the morning service the tune that I 
wished to be sung to the closing hymn. They 
listened kindly as I tried to hum the air that I 
wanted to be sung: perhaps there was something 
like a subdued smile on their friendly faces. 
*' That is a tune we never heard before," said one 
of the brethren gravely — and I very well knew 
what that meant. My tune was only an attempt, 
well-meant but unsuccessful. My heart was mak- 
ing melody unto the Lord that good Sunday morn- 
ing with the Boston Methodists. The thought 
overwhelms me here with a mighty joy that I may 
meet the fellow-worshipers to w^hom I have 
preached the glad gospel of Christ where I shall 
be numbered truly and forever with the Transfig- 
ured Singers. 1 am unworthy, but God's mercy 
isunbounded. There is music in the words: The 
grace that abides is the grace that abounds. 



AN ABIDING BENEDICTION. 



AN ABIDING BENEDICTION. 

GOD bless you, child ! " said Granny Snow- 
to my mother — "God bless you, and 
your children, and your children's chil- 
dren as long as one of your posterity 
lives on earth. God bless you for your 
kindness to me, kindness so thoughtful, so patient, 
so constant." 

Scarcely any incident of my early boyhood has 
recurred to me oftener than this. I had accom- 
panied my mother in her visit to the bedridden, 
poverty-smitten old saint, who lay there with her 
wasted features framed in her snowy cap border. 
It was the face of a saint who had suffered and 
was patient. I was four or five years old, an in- 
quisitive, noisv boy, pugnacious with my equals in 
age and size, yet tender-hearted at the sight of any 
sorrow or pain. The Irish strain in my blood 
carries this mixture of a big lump of combative- 
ness with a pitying heart. Both have needed 
watching. 

It has often seemed to me that, all things con- 
sidered, this generation of my fellow-men has 
made a specialty of according kind treatment unto 
me. Agreeable surprises on this line have met me 
all along the way. Old friends have proved truer 
and nobler under unexpected tests. Strangers 
have done me kindnesses with a grace and glow 
that have made the beginnings of friendships that 
grow sweeter and stronger as the years go by. At 
such times the vision of Granny Snow's furrow^ed 
face has appeared to my mind, and the tremulous 
tones of her voice sounded in memory's ear. 

(269) 



270 SiDisct Viezus. 

There must be something in such a benediction. 
Does not the old Book say something about chil- 
dren's children in connection with the transmission 
of such blessings? Half a hundred years later, 
near this same spot where Granny Snow lived and 
died, I was reminded of the incident recited in the 
beginning of this chapter. I had come back from 
the Pacific Coast an ordained minister of the gos- 
pel, and by special arrangement preached to the 
colored people on Sunday afternoon. Many of the 
associations of the occasion appealed powerfully 
to my heart. I had ** liberty" in my preaching, 
and closed the discourse amid many expressions 
of feeling among my dark-complexioned hearers. 
Among the rest, a stout-framed, jet-black woman 
came forward with the tears streaming from her 
eyes, and grasping my hand said: 

'' I is a Baptis' myself, but it appears to me dat 
de Lord has sent you to preach salvation to de 
ends of de earth. I know'd your mammy, and 
she was good to de black people" — 

Here she broke down with sobs that mightily 
shook her frame. It was like touching a spark to 
tinder. What a hand-shaking I had, and what a 
flood of holy song was poured forth from the 
throats of those hundreds of dark-colored singers ! 
It was evident to me that I had as many friends as 
there were worshipers in that assembly, and that 
they all warmed to me for my mother's sake. Her 
image rose before my eyes, that were misty, and 
the echo of Granny Snow's benediction sounded 
within my soul. Blessed be the memory of that 
mother who had her own sorrows and at times 
grew faint under the weight of her burdens, but 
who always had a hand for help to the lowly and 
a word of cheer for the downhearted ! 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 



WILLIAM McKENDREE. 

HE was the first native American Methodist 
bishop. He was in the true succession, 
following Asbury. His ''call" was of 
the genuine New Testament sort, a call 
to go and preach. He kept going and 
preaching at an astonishing rate, crossing the Al- 
leghany Mountains on horseback sixty-two times, 
and averaging more than one sermon every day 
for fort3^-seven years. Like Asbury, his prede- 
cessor, he never married. The explanation he 
gave of this fact was that he could never find time 
for matrimony. In this he was unlike some of his 
latter-day successors. He was a native of Vir- 
ginia, and came of a family of that solid class 
which is the backbone of both Church and State. 
The McKendrees were Episcopalians of the sort 
that have almost everywhere taken to Methodism 
so readily. They were an earnest people, those 
McKendrees, and Methodism struck them at a 
time when it was stirring to its depths the heart of 
a continent. 

McKendree was the spiritual child of John 
Easter, that unique and picturesque evangelist, 
who preached a gospel of supernatural claims 
which was attested by supernatural results. John 
Easter was truly a m.ighty man of God. When he 
stood before the waiting thousands at a camp meet- 
ing, he carried his credentials in his face, and his 
message moved the hearers wath overwhelming 
power. McKendree was " powerfully converted," 
to use a phrase not yet obsolete in evangelical cir- 

>8 (273) 



2 74 Sunset Views. 

cles. His sorrow for sin was profound; his sur- 
render to Christ was complete. A new song was 
put into his mouth with the inflow of the new Hfe 
into his soul. Ever afterwards that new song was 
sung out by him in notes that were clear and sweet. 
The gospel of perhapses, the gospel that deals in 
interrogation points and guesswork, the gospel, 
so called, that gets a glimmer of many things it 
would like to be true, but no certainty with regard 
to anything in particular — this was not the gospel 
that saved McKendree. To him conversion meant 
passing from death unto life, from darkness to 
light, from the power of Satan unto God — a 
change of heart, a change of Masters, a change of 
life. What he had seen and felt with confidence 
he told — and his spiritual children were after his 
own likeness. He started with the feeling that 
the gospel was the power of God unto salvation ; 
that feeling he never lost. It may seem a little 
singular to us now to read what he said of his ex- 
perience at the New York Conference held in 
May, 1809 — that though he had a comfortable de- 
gree of the Divine Presence, "not many were 
converted." 

McKendree's call to preach came quickly aft- 
er his conversion, and had all the marks of a call 
from God. To him it was as distinct as was his 
call to discipleship: so he always felt and said. 
The divine message was as a fire in his bones. 
The Church took him and held him to her heart 
as a good mother, giving him full work and full 
pay as matters went in those times: first he got 
fifty dollars a year, then eighty dollars, and then 
a round hundred dollars. Blessed bachelor that 
he was, he kept out of debt and avoided all mat- 
rimonial snares. In the light of these facts in his 
financial experience he could understand what 



William iMcKcutlrcc. 275 

Bishop Asbury once said of the preachers of the 
Western Conference: "The brethren were in 
want, so I parted with my watch, my coat, and my 
shirt." (The friendly reader will not draw an in- 
ference too strong as to the scantiness of the sober- 
souled old bishop's wardrobe from the fact that he 
speaks of his undergarment as he does of his 
timekeeper, in the singular number.) 

McKendree had a period of unrest for a season, 
owing to the company he was keeping at the time. 
He misjudged Asbur\% and was led to speak of 
him disparagingly; but when he met him as he 
was, he changed his opinion. McKendree w^as 
one of the men who are quick to resist tyranny on 
the one hand and to assert and enforce rightful 
authority on the other. Most of the men who do 
anything wortli the doing and attain unto wise and 
beneficent leadership in the Church have their sea- 
sons of unrest, breaking out sometimes in a " rash " 
that is remedial, happily precluding in most in- 
stances all need for "constitutional" treatment. 
McKendree had his attack at an early period in 
his ministry, followed by rapid and complete re- 
covery, wath no subsequent relapse. In his otlice 
he was vigilant and firm in the maintenance of the 
authority of the Church and in protecting it against 
disturbers of its peace. When he thought Asbury 
was in error, he opposed him frankly and fearless- 
ly ; but he never fell into the weakness exhibited 
by some men who try to be good, and are partially 
so, yet allow a difference in judgment to produce 
alienation of friendship. His tact and good sense 
may be seen in the following incident related by 
an eye-and-ear witness: "Previous to the first 
delegated General Conference, May, 1812, Bishop 
McKendree drew up a 'plan of business' to be 
brought before that body. His address was read 



276 Sunset Views. 

in Conference; but as it was a new thing, the aged 
bishop ( Asbury) rose to his feet immediately after 
the paper had been read, and addressed the junior 
bishop to the following effect: 'I have something 
to say to you before the Conference.' The Tunior 
also rose to his feet, and they stood face to face. 
Bishop Asbury went on to say: 'This is a new 
thing. I never did business in this way, and why 
is this new thing introduced? ' The junior bishop 
promptly replied : ' You are our father, w^e are 
your sons: you have never had need of it. I am 
only a brother, and have need of it.' Bishop As- 
bury said no more, but sat down with a smile on 
his face." The "new thing" proved to be a 
good thing. 

In the presiding eldership McKendree had de- 
veloped and demonstrated his executive ability and 
his extraordinary power as a preacher. In a legit- 
imate sense of the words it may be said that he 
worked his way to the bishopric. It is quite cer- 
tain that he never sought the office. No surer 
method could have been used by him to r(:pel the 
suffrages of his brethren than to let it be under- 
stood by them that he was a candidate. He ac- 
cepted the office reluctantly. We may be sure that 
his reluctance was genuine: he was a genuine 
man, incapable of such a breach of ordination 
vows and such an offense against humility as w^ould 
be made by seeking responsibilities so heavy and 
an honor so exalted. He preached at the Light 
Street Church the Sunday before the General Con- 
ference began its session in Baltimore, Ma}', 1808: 
text, Jeremiah viii. 21, 22. He had '' full liberty," 
and great was the effect of the sermon, of which 
Dr. Bangs gives a graphic description in his *' His- 
tory of the Methodist Episcopal Church." " The 
congregation," he says, " was overwhelmed with a 



William McKcndrce. 277 

shower of divine grace from the upper world." 
When he descended from the pulpit, the brethren 
were saying in their hearts, *' This is the man 
whom God delights to honor." Bishop Asbury, 
w^ho was present, was heard to say that the ser- 
mon would make JMcKendree a bishop, and the 
remark did not hinder the result prophesied. On 
May 12, the date upon which the resolution to 
elect one bishop was passed, he was elected by the 
largest majority that any bishop has ever received, 
Asbury only excepted. He did not decline the 
office after his election: he dared not do so. His 
brethren had voted for him on his record as a 
preacher, man of affairs, and administrator of 
Church discipline, who had exhibited always the 
self-denial, the zeal, and the prudence of an 
apostle. While claiming nothing from the Church, 
he " belonged" to it in the fullest sense ot the word. 
He was in his fifty-first year, and in the full ripe- 
ness of all his powers. His course was a trail of 
light through all the twenty-seven years that fol- 
lowed, until his death, in Sumner County, Tenn., 
March 5, 1835. 

To William McKendree more than to any other 
man is Episcopal Methodism indebted for the wis- 
dom of its polity and the excellence of its parlia- 
mentary methods. While not insisting upon any 
closeness of analogies, somehow it seems to me 
that what Washington was to the State McKen- 
dree was to the Church in America. 



McTYEIRE AS AN EDITOR. 



McTYEIRE AS AN EDITOR. 



GREAT orators are more numerous than 
great editors. A hundred men are elo- 
quent where one is found to possess the 
indefinable touch that stamps him as a 
born editor. Indefinable it is, just as 
the touch of a musical genius, as contradistin- 
guished from musical talent, is indefinable. A 
glance at a newspaper in the one case, and the hear- 
ing of a single bar of a musical composition in the 
other, reveals the precious gift. 

"The young man has a gift," said Dr. Leroy 
M. Lee, editor of the Richmond Christian Advo- 
cate^ after reading some of McTyeire's first essays 
in newspaper letter-writing. The older editor 
spoke truly: the young man had a gift. People 
began to ask: "Who is this new writer who signs 
himself H. N. McTyeire?" There was in what 
he wrote an incisiveness and an epigrammatic 
sparkle that betokened the advent of a man of gen- 
ius. It is a gracious law of God that men love to do 
that which they can do well. Native bent and prov- 
idential leading take them in the same direction. 
McTyeire excelled in so many things that the ap- 
plication of this aphorism to him seems to be at- 
tended with diflRculty. He was many-sided. As 
a merchant, planter, or stock breeder, he would 
have risen to the top. Whatever he did for the 
time being seemed to be his forte. 

The Church soon discerned that the new editor 
in New Orleans was a man of mark. His lead- 
incr editorials were on live topics. The headings 

(28.) 



282 Sun set Viczc's. 

of them were usually striking and suggestive. He 
had the sense of proportion lacked by so many 
gifted men: he did not waste his strength or space 
on trifles. He knew how to winnow the chaff 
from the wheat. By sheer ability his paper soon 
became an influential organ of public opinion 
within the bounds of the patronizing Conferences 
and beyond. He w^as not disinclined to contro- 
versy when occasion required. The retort he 
gave to the Protestant Episcopal Bishop Green, of 
Mississippi, must have elicited a smile from that 
amiable high-churchman himself. The Bishop 
wrote and published a series of letters on the 
unity of the Church of Christ, in which he gave 
special consideration to the relations of the Epis- 
copalians and the Methodists, concluding, after 
the manner of his school, with an invitation to the 
Methodists to " come back into the Episcopal 
Church." "That is cool!" said McTyeire, 
*' that is cool ! The next proposition, we presume, 
will be to turn the Mississippi River into Buffalo 
Bayou." That was enough: the fallacious plea 
for unity that was not unity was fitly answered. 
In a good-natured way he gave the Pacific Con- 
ference of his own denomination a touch of caustic. 
The well-known Presbyterian preacher, Dr. Wil- 
liam A. Scott, once of New Orleans and after- 
wards of San Francisco, in one of his books had 
repeated the statement that John Wesley once 
tossed up a shilling to decide whether he would be 
an Arminian or a Calvinist. This provoked Mc- 
Tyeire's resentment and elicited from him a sharp 
rebuke in a newspaper article . Not long afterwards, 
during a session of the Pacific Annual Conference, 
held in San Francisco, Dr. Scott presented each 
member of the body with a copy of several of his 
works, among them the one containing the charge 



jMcTyeire as an Editor. 283 

against Mr. Wesley. The Conference, by resolu- 
tion, thanked Dr. Scott for the books thus pre- 
sented by him. When this action of the Confer- 
ence reached McTyeire, he dryly suggested that 
somebody present the Conference with the shilling 
used by Mr. Wesley on the occasion referred to, 
*Mn order that its members might use it in cut- 
ting their wisdom teeth." Though a small matter, 
it is but just to Dr. Scott to say that the relation of 
this story concerning Mr. Wesley was made 
in no invidious spirit. Dr. Scott was a big- 
brained, large-hearted Christian man who 
loved Methodists and was esteemed by them as 
an able and faithful minister of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. A joust between McTyeire and his brother 
editor, Dr. Wightman, of the Southern Christian 
Advocate, attracted the attention of the entire 
Church. They were pretty well matched — the 
brainy and cultured Wightman, then in the full- 
ness of his powers and rapidly rising to a foremost 
place among his brethren; and McTyeire, bright 
and keen and aggressive, who was winning his 
spurs in the arena of intellectual combat. 

McTyeire went loaded — pardon the expression — 
for bigotry and arrogance. His satire was at times 
blistering. Yet he was truly irenic — irenic in this 
sense: that he recognized the essential unity of all 
true followers of Christ, and was always ready to 
extend the right hand of Christian fellowship to all 
who reciprocated fraternal courtesies without set- 
ting up exclusive claims or putting on foolish airs. 
He was irenic on this proper basis, and in his in- 
tercourse with his brethren of other denominations 
he exhibited a refined courteousness and an eleva- 
tion of spirit that won their admiration and good 
will in no small degree. 

As an editor McTveire was broad as well as in- 



284 Sunset Views, 

cisive. His discussions of current questions and 
comments on passing events exhibited rare keen- 
ness of observation and a mind richly furnished 
by wide and varied reading. He was a close 
reader of the periodical literature of the day, and 
his eye ran over the columns of the newspaper 
press wath the rapidity of an expert and with the 
instinct that hit at once upon what he wanted. He 
had what might be called a genius for quotation : he 
could take an extract and give it an editorial setting 
so striking that the very author of the piece quoted 
would be agreeably surprised to see how good a 
thing he had said. The readers of his paper 
learned to look for something on the editorial page 
every week that would put them to thinking. 
About once a month he wTote a leading editorial 
into which he threw his whole strength. 

McTyeire was so prominent and influential dur- 
ing the stormy transitional period in which he lived 
that he did not lack occasion for the exercise of 
his special controversial gift. In one way or an- 
other he took part in all that was going forward in 
the Church. It was his disposition to take sides 
on every question. Not seldom did it devolve on 
him to be the special champion of views or meas- 
ures that were hotly contested. Duty called him 
into the lists, and he responded to the call. To- 
gether with a natural relish for intellectual combat, 
he had driving power enough to have made him a 
revolutionary leader had not grace made him con- 
servative. He was half Irish, and that half at 
times seemed to be the whole man. Whenever 
there shall be in Christendom a fight, whether with 
spiritual or carnal weapons, in which no Irishman 
takes part, it will be w^hen there are no Irishmen 
left. The Scotch half of McTyeire was not a non- 
combative element in his constitution. 



McTycirc as an Editor. 285 

Barred subsequently b\^ considerations growing 
out of his otlicial position from entering tlie arena 
of newspaper controversy, JMcTyeire sometimes 
relieved his mental tension and acquitted his con- 
science by inditing articles that were published 
anonymously in the newspaper press of the 
Church. These articles were signed '' Old Meth- 
odist," **An Elder," " Onesiphorus," or some- 
thing of the sort. But it was not easy for such a 
writer as he to preserve his incognito. Not a few 
discerning readers suspected that behind these fa- 
miliar noms de ■plume was the puissant President of 
the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University. 
Now and then an aggrieved disputant complained 
that he had been anonymously attacked, and in- 
timated that he suspected the true authorship — 
"flushing big game," said an editor who had a 
graphic way of putting things. Pending the meet- 
ing of the General Conference of 1882, there was 
a slight agitation in the Church on the subject of 
organic union with the Methodist Episcopal Church 
(North). It was a slight agitation indeed, scarce- 
ly touching the great body of the ministry and 
membership of our Church; but there seemed to 
be some danger that it might reach proportions 
or assume a phase that would imperil the har- 
mony of the General Conference session, and 
possibly cause other troubles. Tw^o or three 
sprightly writers had found access to the columns 
of the Church press with articles advocating or- 
ganic union, and a worthy and well-meaning broth- 
er had even published a book advocating that 
measure. Ever watchful of his Church's interest 
and of the signs of the times. Bishop McTyeire 
wrote an elaborate paper in w^hich he recited the 
history of the separation of Episcopal Methodism 
in America into two coequal parts and the subse- 



286 Sunset Viavs. 

quent history of each as it bore upon the ques- 
tion at issue; then he drew a picture of Southern 
Methodism peaceful, prosperous, and rapidly grow- 
ing; and finally showed the confusion, discord, 
and disaster that would result from the introduc- 
tion of a proposition for organic union into the 
General Conference. " It will be a bold hand that 
will throw this apple of discord into the body," he 
said in conclusion. There was no hand bold 
enough to make that cast after the appearance of 
that masterly paper in the Nashville Christimi Ad- 
vocate. It was printed as an editorial, the editor 
of the connectional organ being glad thus to util- 
ize so conclusive an argument sustaining his own 
view of the question. The article was not an- 
swered: it was unanswerable. It demonstrated 
the unwisdom of the proposed measure and punc- 
tured the fallacies of its advocates in such a way 
that the Church has ever since had rest on that 
line. It did more: it conserved the fraternal re- 
lations happily existing with the sister Methodism 
which would have been imperiled by an abortive 
attempt to force a measure which was then contra- 
indicated by all the facts of the situation and could 
be productive only of harm to all the precious in- 
terests involved. The writer of this paper was the 
editor of the connectional organ of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, at the time here spoken 
of, and in stating these facts feels that he is only 
discharging a brotherly obligation and givinghonor 
where honor is due. 

American Methodism has had no abler editor 
than McTyeire. In going over the files of the pa- 
pers edited by him, the appreciative reader sees 
everywhere the work of a mind of extraordinary 
power, and is charmed by a style scarcely equaled 
for its simplicity and force — the force of Saxon 



Mc Tyci'rc as an Editor. 287 

monosyllables shot straight at their object, rarely 
missing and sure when they did strike to bring 
down the game. While he was notably militant 
and aggressive, his columns were illuminated with 
flashes of the most genial humor, and his simple 
pathos was inimitable and irresistible. lie had the 
insight and genuine sympathy that made another's 
sorrow his own. He wrote many memoirs of the 
sainted dead at the request of the bereaved, and in 
these sacred tributes thoughtfulness and depth of 
feeling were so blended that they were models of 
their kind. In the families in which he had min- 
istered to the sick and whose dead he had buried 
he was never forgotten. 

Wherever McTyeire's voice w^as heard, it rose 
clear and strong above all the din and confusion 
of his time, and it w^as recognized by all as the 
voice of a leader. Had he remained on the tripod, 
we cannot say whether his place in Methodist his- 
tory would have been larger or smaller. He w^ould 
have done a different work, but it might have been 
as great. Religious literature might have gained 
what would have been lost elsewhere. 



THE QUESTION WE ARE ALL ASKING 
WHY DO THEY NOT COME BACK ? 

19 



THE QUESTION WE ARE ALL ASKING: WHY DO 
THEY NOT COME BACK? 



OF the millions who love us while they are 
with us, and who die and leave us every 
year, why does not one of them all come 
back and tell us something of that other 
life to which they have gone ? Why not, 
why not? these human hearts have been asking 
through all the long ages of the past, and they are 
still asking the unanswered question wherever there 
are living hearts that love, and vacant seats in 
homes bereft, and empty cradles where sad-faced 
mothers weep. Some whose great, true hearts we 
knew promised when they left us to come back to 
us with a message from the other side if they could 
and if it were right for them so to do. But they 
have not come back to us, though long years have 
passed. The faces we loved to look upon are veiled; 
in the silence that is unbroken the voices we loved 
to hear are hushed. Their images are still held in 
our hearts, that could not forget if they w^ould and 
would not forget if they could. Embracing them 
in our dreams, we awake clasping only the empty 
air. Thrilling with the tones that were sweet to 
our ears before their lips were closed and cold, we 
awake in the silence, and find no voice to answer 
the question that our hearts are still asking: Why 
do they not come back to tell us w^here they are, 
and what they have seen since they went away? 

That is a sad note w^rung from the heart of 
Israel's king, that grand, faulty man who had in 
his soul passion enough to make a thousand trag- 



292 Sunset Views. 

edies, and nobility enough to make a whole army 
of heroes, a man so good at his best, so bad at 
his worst. Of his dead child he said: "I shall 
go to him, but he shall not return to me." He 
shall not return: that was certain. There is no 
sign of doubt here. He accepted a fact that can- 
not be denied: the dead do not return. That is 
the rule. The exceptions are nothing but excep- 
tions. Now and then, when God in his own wisest 
way causes the line of separation to be crossed, it 
is for a gracious purpose and wdth sacred safe- 
guards. When man seeks to cross this line on 
his own volition, his curiosity is baffled, his temer- 
ity is rebuked, his diabolism unmasked. Where 
the love of money is the root of this evil, the 
conscious motive of a pretense of bridging the 
chasm between the two worlds, it is hard to deal 
with it in the exercise of our poor human wisdom. 
Some of these pretenders, like Simon Magus, re- 
pent and amend their lives; others, like the Witch 
of Endor, bewitch souls that are w^eak or unset- 
tled, souls that are unlawfully impatient. In the 
Old Testament record these "witches" flit before 
our vision enwrapped in lurid light, speaking 
strange words and doing strange things. I have 
no word of censure or scorn for the men and 
women w^hose yearning hearts prompt them to in- 
quire of these who say they can give an answer 
to the question that all of us are asking. But if 
any good has ever come from this sort of thing, 
it has never come to my knowledge. My heart 
invokes the pity of the good God for the breaking 
heart that is hungering for the message that does not 
come, the eager soul that chafes at the long, long 
delay- 

One world at a time, is the rule. If we try to 
break over this rule, it is at our peril. But our 



The Question We Are All Asking. 293 

Heavenly Father will not leave us in doubt as to 
the main thing — namely, that there is a life to come. 
We may hopefully and patiently wait to hear his 
voice speak as never man spake. The attitude 
of the soul toward this highest truth measures its 
receptivity in a sense that conveys a warning as 
solemn as the judgment and suggests a blessedness 
beyond estimation. It is the old law in practical 
operation: to him that hath shall be given. To 
him w^ho is a sincere lover of truth, more and more 
truth will be revealed. The truth as it is in Jesus, 
who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, will re- 
ward the search of him whose desires invite its com- 
ing and whose spiritual habitudes insure its assim- 
ilation. A young Japanese student who had em- 
braced Christianity at Vanderbilt University said 
to me with a beaming face: "The personality of 
Jesus Christ mastered me." Bless his brave, man- 
ly soul ! He loved the truth, and w^as eager in his 
search for it; and when he received the Master's 
touch, he was ready for it. The good seed in this 
case fell upon good ground. The Japanese nation, 
whose soldiers are not afraid to die and are faith- 
ful unto death, it seems to me, is good soil in which 
to sow the good seed of the kingdom of God. 
Whatever of literalness there is in the prediction 
that *' a nation shall be born in a day," we might 
hope to see shown by that people whose fight 
with the Russians in Manchuria is exciting the 
wonder of the world at this hour. 

One world at a time may be necessitated by the 
limitations of this short human life on earth. We 
are planted in the soil of earth, and there we must 
grow. The conditions that belong to the life to 
come would probably fit us no more than would 
the life of a bird of the air suit a fish of the sea. 
*' It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says 



294 Smiset Views. 

the apostle John, who had seen as much of these 
things as any one else has ever done. The all-sat- 
isfying truth is revealed that in that life to come 
the disciples who truly love their Lord shall be like 
him, because *' they shall see him as he is." The 
modes of that life, and the fullness of it, and the 
glory of it, could not be disclosed clearly or 
profitably to those who are still in the body. The 
glimpse that the apostle Paul had of the things 
*'up there" he was forbidden to reveal — perhaps 
for this very reason the attempt to utter what he 
saw in the language of earth would fail, and serve 
only to bewilder and dishearten where he would 
be glad to convey light and strength. The lan- 
guage of earth is inadequate to describe the glories 
of the heavenly life. The blundering and frag- 
mentary discussion of this theme w^ould divert into 
unprofitable channels the activities demanded by a 
probationary life that is very brief and whose 
course is necessarily one of practical activities. 
This probationary life means the '* working out 
our salvation," wnth no time to lose and no 
strength to fritter away in jabbering and wonder- 
ing over matters that belong to another stage of 
existence. Lazarus was three days and nights 
somewhere in the world of spirits, but he brought 
back no message for us. Moses, when he met the 
Divine Presence on the mount, came back with a 
shining face, but with no revelation beside the spe- 
cific message with which he was charged — a mes- 
sage that related not to the glories of heaven but 
to the duties of earth. The meaning of all this is, 
as it seems to me, one w^orld at a time. The 
teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples 
had to be graduated as they were able to bear 
them. More is coming, and better. This we are 
told, and proofs are plentiful that He that bath 



The Ji^iicslion JTe Arc All Asking. 295 

promised is faithful and able to bring it all to pass. 
So we will watch and wait and work w^hile it is 
called to-day. Yes, w^e will w^iit until our change 
comes — which change the apostle tells us (2 Cor. 
iii. 18) will be a "changefrom glory to glory, "good, 
better, best. So we will take things as they come 
here on earth. We may *' groan," being bur- 
dened, and we are only human; but we will not 
whine, we will not doubt, we will not complain 
because we are called to follow the path our Mas- 
ter trod. And we will sing out our song of joy 
because, as Bunyan's pilgrim puts it, "the thoughts 
of what we are going to lie like live coals at our 
hearts." With the apostle Paul (Rom. v. 3-5) 
say: ''We glory in tribulations also: knowing that 
tribulation worketh patience; and patience, expe- 
rience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh 
not ashamed; because the love of God is shed 
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is 
given unto us." Read these words, so rich in 
their meaning, so sweet to the taste, and do not be 
afraid to rejoice in the consciousness that you 
possess the best things here and that you are on 
your way to the best things there — from grace to 
glory, and from glory to glory. That word " trib- 
ulation " means ''thrashing," so the scholars tell 
us. Studying these definitions in the school of ex- 
perience, the deeper I go into their meanings the 
more I am constrained to praise the Lord, and it 
would be no perfunctory utterance for me to say 
just here: Glory be to Him to whom belongs now 
and forever the kingdom and the power and the 
glory ! 

With reverent souls let us revert to the other 
clause of the Old Testament text with which we 
began. The smitten king, getting ready to bury 
out of his sight his dead child, and realizing that 



296 Sunset Views. 

in the relation of father and child it was the last 
of earth, said: '' I shall go to him." I shall go to 
my child in my own identity, and meet the child 
in its own identity. If his words do not have this 
meaning, they mean nothing worth recording or 
repeating.' Human love is a mockery if it is to be 
buried forever in the grave. When the apostle 
Paul assures his sorrowing fellow-believers at 
Thessalonica, who were mourning for their dead, 
that " them that sleep in Jesus wall God bring with 
him " at the resurrection, can he mean less than 
that they will be recognized when they meet? If 
not, it was but a poor attempt to console their bro- 
ken hearts. Elsewhere in the New Testament 
(Luke xvi. 9) believers are exhorted to "make to 
themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous- 
ness," that the beneficiaries of their bounty might 
welcome them *' into everlasting habitations." It 
surely signifies that the earthly relation of giver and 
receiver of kindness will form the basis of a rec- 
ognition and fellowship that will gladden their ar- 
rival and enhance their felicity in the City of God 
forever. Christian culture intensifies and exalts 
human affection and Christian friendship, and 
gives to these relationships something of the sa- 
credness and imperishability of every sweet and 
holy thing that has been hallowed by the blessing 
of the Lord. I know there are questions that will 
arise that are hard to answer with re^rard to these 
relationships here and there, and I have no de- 
sire to appear to be wise above what is written ; 
but I wish here and now solemnly yet joyfully to 
record my belief that all the holy affections belong- 
ing to the relationships ordained of God in this 
earthly life will, in the essential elements that give 
them their beauty and their blessedness, live as 
long as God himself shall live. Thus believing, 



The J^uestion We Are All Asking. 297 

my Christian friendsliips become more and more 
precious ; and my daily prayer is, that my affection 
which touches those in the inner circle of home 
and kindred may be purer and wiser with the w^is- 
dom which is love, the love which will be carried 
with us into the heaven where we shall see face 
to face and know even as we are known, and 
where awaits us, according to the promise of God, 
knowledge without ignorance, power without w^eak- 
ness, and love without alloy. All this I know goes 
beyond an}- possible deservings of mine, but my 
hopes are measured by the promise of the Lord. 

These sunset views at Seabreeze may seem to go 
far, but God's promise goes farther. The apostle's 
doxology that closes the third chapter of his Epistle 
to the Ephesians sings itself in my soul as I close 
this chapter: *'Now unto him that is able to do 
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
think, according to the power that worketh in us, 
unto him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus 
throughout all ages, w^orld without end. Amen.'* 



THE SON OF MAN. 



THE SON OF MAN. 



THE motto for the morning prayer that sun- 
ny Sabbath morning at Seabreeze was 
Luke vi. 5: "And he said unto them, 
That the Son of man is Lord also of the 
Sabbath." The prayer was something Hke 
this: " With adoration and praise we come before 
thy presence, O Lord, as the Son of God, our di- 
vine Redeemer. With sacred joy we draw nigh 
unto thee, O Lord, as the Son of Man. Thou art 
our blessed Immanuel, God with us in our hearts 
and in our homes. Thou didst take upon thyself 
our human nature, hungering and thirsting, toiling, 
sorrowing, dying. Thou knowest our frames, and 
rememberest that we are dust. Thou art the 
Lord also of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is suited 
in its design and influence to our human needs and 
capacities. It is the Sabbath, not merely of forms, 
but of service and help, of mercy. It is a Sab- 
bath of light and love from the Son of Man to all 
the children of men in all lands and throughout all 
ages. Make it such a Sabbath to us, blessed Lord. 
Be with us where we are; hallow all our employ- 
ments and devotions by thy blessing; give us, 
above all, that which is the fulfilling of the law, and 
be thou to us the end of the law for ric^hteousness 
as true believers. Son of Man, let us feel the clasp 
of thine arms and be filled with the joy of thy 
great salvation in this home and m all our hearts. 
Amen." 

The faces of the little company spoke the an- 
swer that was given to the prayer. The venerable 

(30') 



302 Sunset I7czvs. 

lady with white hair and wasted form, who had 
been for many days a prisoner in the home, a help- 
less cripple, had on her face the light reflected 
-from the countenance of her Lord. The toil- 
worn, sorrow-smitten features of the little woman 
in black at the head of the table were wet with 
tears that spoke of tenderness and trust in the com- 
panionship of the Son of Man, who was the man of 
sorrows. The sister who sat near, also wearing 
the sable color of grief, had a shining face and 
a new light in her eye. The two visitors to Sea- 
breeze felt, not for the first time but most sweetly, 
that the Son of Man in the fullest, loftiest, sweet- 
est sense of the expression was Lord also of the 
Sabbath. 

The other sister, youngest of the three, the af- 
flicted child of the family, who was to be always a 
child until her childhood was merged in the life to 
come, had the look, at once pathetic in its weak- 
ness and restful in its trust, which we may think 
of as that which was on the faces of the little chil- 
dren that Jesus took up in his arms and blessed 
when he was with us in the actual bodily 
presence. The black boy, the colored lad who 
whistled and sang all day at his work in and 
around the house, w^ho always came in to the little 
prayer service in the morning, w^as a little sobered 
with that serene soberness of look that speaks of a 
soul that gets a glimpse of the Mighty One Lord 
who rules in righteousness, and is the Friend of 
sinners and the Comforter who abides with his 
people forever. 



OUR THREE PILLOWS. 



OUR THREE PILLOWS. 

I HAD just received a letter from a friend who 
is a chronic invalid, so utterly disabled by 
sickness that he has not left his bed for many 
months. My morning Scripture lesson was 
the forty-first Psalm. The third verse struck 
me with special force. The promise to a good 
man that the Lord *' will make all his bed in sick- 
ness " touched tenderly the heart of the writer, 
who is acquiring an intelligent sympathy with the 
sick in the only w^ay by which it can come to us — 
that is, by personal experience of the same sort. I 
recall the remark of a dying believer many jgrvs 
ago, who, when asked by his pastor, ** How are 
you, sir?" said, *'My head is resting very sw^eet- 
ly on three pillows — infinite love, infinite wisdom, 
and infmite power." The thought came to me 
that it is the same hand that makes the believer's 
bed now, and upon the same pillows may rest the 
weary head now as when the man of God wrote 
this text. 

Infinite love will withhold no good thing from 
the trusting soul. It would bestow more than we 
can ask or think. There may be vagueness in our 
minds in the expression "infinite love," but We 
can look for nothing less, we can employ no nar- 
rower terms in dealing with God. 

In the next place, we are to remind ourselves 
that infinite wisdom plans for all that infinite love 
desires in our behalf. The wisdom of God — the 
words suggest a breadth of meaning beyond de- 
scription in human speech. 

20 (305) 



3o6 Sioiset Views. 

In the third place, we may call to mind the fact 
that infinite power can bring to pass all that infinite 
love desires and all that infinite wisdom plans in 
behalf of a trusting soul. 

These are the three pillows : The love th^t 
abides and abounds, the wisdom that never fails, 
the power that saves to the uttermost. On these 
three pillows ye may rest your heads, all ye that 
suffer. Your needs may be great, but the re- 
sources of your Comforter are sufficient, being in- 
finite in their extent and eternal in their duration. 



BIG AB: A TYPICAL OLD-TIME NEGRO. 



BIG AB : A TYPICAL OLD-TIME NEGRO. 



BIG AB was a typical negro of the old dis- 
pensation. He had the size and strength 
of a giant. He was good-natured and re- 
ligious after a most cheerful sort. He af- 
fected big words. In polemics he w^as 
especially strong. Lie quoted Scripture abundant- 
1}', though some of his texts would scarcely recog- 
nize themselves as presented by him. He stood 
high in the esteem of his own people, who admired 
him for his physical prowess and for his stilted vo- 
cabulary. He was honest through and through 
and truthful to the core, albeit he was overfond 
of superlatives. He had an ax for his own par- 
ticular use that was larger than any w^ielded by 
any .other man on the plantation, and he had no 
equal among them as a w^ood chopper. 

I am just able to remember Big Ab's excite- 
ment at the time of the Nat Turner insurrection in 
Virginia. It was reported that Turner was at the 
head of fourteen hundred negroes at the crossing 
of Dan River at sunset, and might be expected to 
reach our place, about eight miles distant, within 
two or three hours. The report said that they 
were killing everybody and burning everything as 
they came. Taking his big ax, Big Ab climbed 
to the roof of the corncrib facing up the stage 
road in the direction w^hence Turner and his fol- 
lowers were expected, saying: "I'd like to see 
any of dem niggers tech ole marster!" 

The dusky giant was fully persuaded that, 

(309) 



3IO Sunset Views. 

armed as he was with his huge weapon, he could 
repel a whole army of assailants. The alarm 
proved to be false. Nat Turner got his quietus 
long before he reached Dan River and the North 
Carolina line. But had he come, he would have 
found Big Ab ready to fight for his ole marster, 
and willing to die for him if needful. Ole Mars- 
ter was my great-uncle, James Powell; Big Ab's 
full name was Abner Powell, according to the 
fashion then prevailing where the patriarchal in- 
stitution of " domestic involuntar}- servitude " ex- 
isted. 

On another occasion very distinctly remembered 
by me Big Ab exhibited a very natural excitement. 
It was at the so-called *' falling of the stars," 
which took place in the fall or winter of eighteen 
hundred and thirty something. I am not good on 
dates, but that event has a very distinct place in 
my recollection. 

'* Look, Mistis!" said Aunt Ailsie, bursting into 
my mother's room in terror; "look! de stars is 
all falling from de sky ! De day of judgment is 
come!" Aunt Ailsie was Big Ab's amazonian 
black sister, and was of the same type of honesty 
and faithfulness. I shall never forget the meteoric 
display I witnessed that night. It seemed, to use 
the language of a spectator who attempted to de- 
scribe it, as if a great globe in midheaven had 
burst into ten thousand times ten thousand glitter- 
ing fragments that were flying in all directions 
across the firmament. I have never witnessed any 
other spectacle that equaled this in splendor; nor 
do I expect to see anything like it until the com- 
ing of the great day, when the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat, the sun and moon be darkened, 
and the dead, both small and great, stand before 
God in the final judgment. And what a night 



Bi'i^Ab: A Typical Old-Tlinc Xcgru. 311 

those black folks made of it ! They sang, they 
prayed, they exhorted, they shouted, they wept. 
Big Ab was in his glory. He exhorted grandly, 
and was particularl}' impressive in rolling forth 
ponderous words that sounded like inspiration to 
that excited audience. His faith was strong, and 
he had lungs to match. 

During the Civil War Big Ab remained where he 
was when it began, pursuing the even tenor of his 
way, and giving his labor for the support of the 
family to which he belonged. Doubtless he watched 
the course of the struggle with the deepest interest, 
knowing how much he had staked upon the result. 
As in most human actions, his motives were mixed : 
family affection, the prudence demanded by one 
in his place at a time when the white folks of all 
parts of our country were shooting at one anoth- 
er, made it a ticklish and perilous time for non- 
combatants of all sorts. In this respect Big Ab 
was a typical black man. The great bod}^ of the 
negroes in the South remained where they were 
on the farms, and worked in the fields for the sup- 
port of the Southern armies, protecting the women 
and children whose husbands, brothers, and sons 
were there enrolled. There is nothing like this in 
the history of the world. The remembrance of it 
makes a hopeful factor in the present outlook with 
reference to the race problem in these Southern 
States. 

After the war Big Ab accepted his freedom and 
became a preacher of the Primitive Baptist per- 
suasion. He had the confidence and good will of 
the white people who knew his character, and 
among his own people of color he was an oracle. 
His sermons were homiletic gems, dealing in high- 
wrought figures, occult symbolism with big words 
remarkable for their melodiousness, if not for their 



312 Sunset Views, 

lucidity. Speaking of him as a preacher, anothel 
colored minister of the gospel was quoted as put- 
ting his aspirations as follows: " Hang our jaws 
on de hinges of heaven, our tongues on de root of 
salvation, and we'll mount de milk-white horse of 
de gospel, and sail away to Galilee." 

" Yes, that is Big Ab's style," was the answer; 
'* and he can go on in that style interminably, 
without break or pause." 

Big Ab, when last heard from, was a notable 
preacher of wholesome influence among his peo- 
ple. His creed includes the Ten Commandments, 
his rhetoric is guided by good sense in its most 
flowery flights, his voice resembles melodious 
thunder, while his mighty physique makes him the 
king of the pulpit, as he was of the *' new ground " 
when wielding his big ax as a wood chopper on 
the old plantation. In calling him a typical black 
man, I designedly seek to throw the light of hope 
on the future of the negro race in the South. This 
is said in the belief that there are a sufficient num- 
ber of his type in these States to leaven the huge 
mass of these black people who came to their free- 
dom in the midst of the most complex conditions, 
but vv^ith enough of the gospel of Christ in their 
souls to light their way through the wilderness to 
whatever promised land they are bound for. Big 
Ab is worth whole acres of the class of politicians 
of whatever color who make graft the object of 
their highest ambition and look to a Federal office 
as the climax of human aspiration and endeavor. 



ANOTHER QUESTION ALL ARE ASKING 
WHEN AND WHY DID MIRACLES 
CEASE? 



ANOTHER QUESTION ALL ARE ASKING: WHEN 
AND WHY DID MIRACLES CEASE ? 

WHEN and why did miracles cease? 
We cannot help asking this question. 
Wishing to get the right answer to it, 
I consulted anew the commentaries: 
they differed one from another, 'the 
wisest among them saying the least. I inquired of 
living friends of my own and other communions: 
their answers would make a curious study for any 
student of human nature. The last two persons 
to whom I addressed this inquiry were doctors of 
divinity and exegetical experts who stood as high 
as the highest. Their answers made me smile as 
I read them. They were both to the same effect. 
They did not say explicitly: "We do not know." 
They had been teachers in a biblical school, and 
were not in the habit of parading their limitations 
before the gaze of others, however keenly felt by 
themselves. One said in substance: "Give me 
time, and I may send you some sort of an answer 
to your question; it is not a new question, its im- 
portance cannot be denied, and I wish to speak 
advisedly." I gave him time, but he has not yet 
given me an answer. I do not think less favor- 
ably of him because of his delay. The other doc- 
tor of divinity said: "Give me time, and I will 
answer if I can. It seems harder for me to find a 
satisfactory reply now than it did when my years 
were fewer and my reading more restricted." 
Both of these brethren are still taking their time. 

(315) 



3i6 Stinset Views. 

Blessings on their cautious, honest souls! They 
feel that it is better to be silent than to talk at ran- 
dom or to risk saying what might harm the cause 
of truth. If anybody should remind me that their 
example was a good one for me to follow in this 
matter, I will not take offense. For many years 
whenever I have thought that I had something to 
say to my people, I have been in the habit of say- 
ing it by word of mouth or scratch of the pen. 
The sort of answer that I offer here will be ac- 
cepted as well meant by the kindly constituency 
for whom it has been prepared. 

The question is. When and why did miracles 
cease ? What I have to say will be given to the 
reader as it has been given to me. 

Let us at the start define what a miracle is as 
the word is used in our question. A miracle is a 
work above the ordinar}^ course of nature wrought 
by supernatural power to authenticate a messenger 
or message from God. False miracles are imita- 
tions of these real miracles, and are dangerous ac- 
cording to the measure of their resemblance to the 
genuine. That there is a kingdom of evil antag- 
onizing the kingdom of God in the earth is clear- 
ly taught in the Bible, and much that we meet 
with in human history and in the life that touches 
our lives to-day can be accounted for rationally 
and logically in no other way than by the accept- 
ance of this strange and awful fact. Read Luke 
X. 17-20 and John xii. 31. The mysteries belong- 
ing to this matter of Satanic existence and Satanic 
influence are confessedly great; but not greater 
than the mystery enveloping this entire question of 
a spiritual sphere that touches this in which we 
now live and move and have our being. If we re- 
ject whatever we find in the Holy Scriptures that 
transcends our comprehension, we shall at once 



W/ioi iuid Why Did jMiraclcs Cease? 317 

find ourselves breathin<^ the cold, deadly miasm of 
unbelief. Our religion is supernatural from first 
to last, and therefore more credible, if not more 
comprehensible, as coming from God. His is the 
kingdom, and the power, and the glory. He will 
reign whose right it is. The gospel of Christ is 
the Aaron's rod that swallows up all the inferior 
and false systems of religion, so called, whether 
the product of Satanic influence or the offspring 
of human folly, that now darken the counsels of 
our race. 

Miracles, in the sense in which they are herein 
considered, have never been turned over to men 
as a field to be worked according to their own im- 
pulses, whims, or desires. They made bare the 
Almighty arm at proper times. They spoke God's 
voice in due season. When man W'Ould intrude 
into this sphere uncalled and unguided, it is to 
meet the shadow of his impending doom like the 
kingly but evil-spirited Saul at Gilboa, or to be 
stricken with retributive lightning like Ahab when 
he sought a message from the false prophets w^hom 
God had not sent, and were ready to prophesy 
unto him the lie that he wanted. The false heart 
invites the false prophet, and the false prophet is 
the ready messenger of the father of lies. True 
miracles come under the law that all things in the 
spiritual sphere are as truly under the law as in the 
natural world. The pretended miracle workers 
who w^ould evade this law invite the confusion and 
disaster that overtake them. There are entire peo- 
ples now existing typified by the man who went 
out from the prophet's presence leprous as snow 
because he had forsaken the oracles of God and 
listened to lying spirits. Some of these peoples, 
we may hope, are ready for the healing touch of 
the Christ; all the fitness he requires is that they 



31 8 Su7iset Views. 

feel their need of him. He is ready, and they 
will be ready in that day of his power, which is 
dawning. He will push this work to the comple- 
tion promised in the assurance that " He must 
reign until he hath put all enemies under his feet." 
He must reign whose right it is. It is a moral 
necessity that he shall not stop short of this blessed 
consummation. How deep is the meaning of the 
words, *' He shall see of the travail of his soul, 
and shall be satisfied!" (Isa. liii. ii.) What 
satisfies Him will leave no room for complaint in 
these sensitive hearts of ours, endowed with capac- 
ity for loving with a love that is stronger than 
death and as lasting as our being. That word 
*' satisfied" is large enough for us all as children 
of God and heirs of God and joint heirs with 
Christ to the inheritance that is undefiled and be- 
3''ond the possibility of defilement, crowned wdth 
the quality of indestructibiHty and incapable of 
diminution. 

In no true sense of the word can it be said that 
God has ceased to govern and guide in every 
truest, highest, and best sense of the w^ord this 
world that he hath created and redeemed. We 
can say as truly as did the Psalmist: " The Lord 
reigneth : let the earth rejoice." 

In the special sense in which the word is here 
used miracles did cease when the gospel dispensa- 
tion under which we live was fully inaugurated. 
The miracle of miracles is that gospel in its sources 
and its agencies. 

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the 
miracle of all miracles. It is the best-attested fact 
in the history of the human race. That which w^as 
universal and abiding took the place of that which 
was local and transient. The miraculous birth, 
personal ministry, sacrificial death with attending 



When a}}d Why Did Miracles Cease? 319 

wonders and portents, the resurrection on the 
third day, were facts authenticated beyond cavil by 
Hving witnesses sufficient in number and in char- 
acter combined to make a mass of " infalHble 
proofs " too strong to be resisted and relating to 
interests too important to be neglected by rational 
souls to whom they might be made known. 

The next thing to be done was to go into all the 
world and preach this gospel as summed up in its 
meaning and claims, its duties and its hopes, in 
these two words: Jesus and the Resurrection. 
Christianity means this; with its correlated facts 
and results, means everything. The resurrection 
of Jesus proved all that he had taught, authenti- 
cated all the wonders he had wrought, and guar- 
anteed all that he had promised. " Go and preach 
the gospel, and I will be with you always, even 
unto the end of the world," was his command to his 
apostles, and through them to their successors. It 
had now come to pass that which is declared by 
the apostle Paul (Eph. i. 10), " That in the dispen- 
sation of the fullness of times he might gather to- 
gether in one all things in Christ." The reader 
sees whither our argument leads. The miracle of 
the resurrection, all-significant, all-embracing, this 
transcendent miracle proven and proclaimed, your 
minor miracles, that were significant and valuable 
only as they led to this, sink into disuse and 
vanish. 

The great correlated fact of the gospel is that of 
the Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 
a fullness and power that made it the practical in- 
itiation of the new dispensation. The Lord's 
command to his disciples was that they should not 
depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of 
the Father. When that promise was fulfilled, 
Christianity was launched for its voyage that 



320 Sunset Views, 

would end on the millennial shore. The fulfill- 
ment is recorded by one who knew the *' infallible 
proofs," and who bears testimony that carries its 
proof on its face, proof that has stood, and will al- 
ways stand, all tests that are fair and sane. Read 
the account as given in the first and second chap- 
ters of the Acts of the Apostles. Read prayerful- 
ly and plead the promise as you read. 

Put with this the perpetual miracle of interces- 
sory prayer w^hich is being enacted by the living 
Church, which is the depository of the truth as it 
is in Jesus and the instrument of its propagation. 
Read in Matthew xviii. 19, 20 the gracious prom- 
ise: ** Again I say unto you. That if two of you 
shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father 
which is in heaven. For where two or three are 
gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
midst of them." 

That Presence in the midst is w^hat God's peo- 
ple would naturally wish to be true.. This Pres- 
ence in the midst is that which, being true, is the 
perpetual miracle that supersedes minor tokens of 
God's goodness and attests to each generation 
that this gospel is the power of God unto salva- 
tion. 

There is the promise and its fulfillment. The 
writer of this attempt to answer the questions 
herein propounded feels the fires of the Pentecost 
burning in his soul as he pens these lines on the 
7th day of February in the year of our Lord 
1905. As a young man, he has had his visions; 
as an old man, he is having his dreams. The 
Pentecost came to stay. It is here, flaming in 
holy spiritual fires in Wales, speaking with its 
tongues of fire in Colorado, kmdling its light in 
Japan, and working wonders prefigured by these 



Whoi and ]\liy Did Miracles Cease? 321 

material symbols of the events that shall accom- 
pany the final victory of the gospel of Christ. 
Whenever, wherever, and forever whosoever shall 
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Here 
it is (John xvi. 7) : *' It is expedient for you that I 
go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send 
him unto you." 

There is the answer. It is the reincarnation of 
the Son of God in every believing heart. The 
mystery of it w^e cannot explain. The joy of it 
we can feel. The glory of it in its final issues we 
can share. 



LED BY THE SPIRIT. 



LED BY THE SPIRIT. 

THIS sentiment has had a large place in my 
thought, a special place in my prayers, and 
a powerful influence on my life for many 
years. The New Testament authority for 
praying to be led by the Holy Spirit seems 
to be explicit. The type of piety developed under 
this view has always seemed to be clear and strong. 
It fills a human life with glory and with God. Thus 
Paul believed and spoke. Thus Wesley believed 
and spoke. Thus have believed and spoken all 
the men who have brought things to pass in the 
history of the Church. This is a solemn and 
lofty thought: no degree of familiarity can make 
it otherwise. Led is the word. The willing soul 
gets the blessing. The blessing is offered to no 
other. Willingness to be led implies that the soul 
is pivoted on the divine v^nll. The prayer of the 
disciple who would be led by his Lord is thisri 
"Thy will be done." What does it mean to be 
led just as I am and where I am? Let us see. 

I seat myself at my writing table, take pen, ink, 
and paper with a wish in my heart to obey that 
command which requires that a believer shall "be 
willing to communicate." To whom shall I write? 
What shall I write? Does the Hoty Spirit have 
any function herein? Surely, surely! At this 
very table on which I am now writing I have sat 
down many a time with this prayer to be led in the 
use of my pen, and my thoughts have taken a 
special direction, the objects of my prayer have 
been made to stand out graciously clear, and the 

(325) 



326 Sunset Views, 

very stationery on which I have traced the words 
that have come to me has seemed to be suffused 
with a heavenly hght. From somewhere came a 
tenderness, a glow, and a sacred joy then and 
there. 

This very day, after I had been meditating on 
this subject with an intense desire to get the right 
view of it, and a purpose fixed and strong to be led 
according to the promise, I visited one of our 
bishops, a sufferer who had been led to meditate 
on this same subject. He is a strong thinker, 
having the learning of the schools, and is a sweet- 
toned disciple of Jesus. We were led — so it 
seemed to me with a mighty joy in my soul — to 
exchange our thoughts on this subject of being 
led by the Spirit of the Lord. Then we bowed 
our heads and united in a prayer of thanksgiving 
for the blessedness of the fellowship we had with 
our Lord and with each other. The coincidences 
of our communion were not by chance : led is the 
word. 

In Nashville I had a friend and neighbor who 
was a chronic sufferer, a man once of buoyant 
animal spirits and large estate, who had lost his 
property and wrecked his health. One day in 
connection with his name a passage of Scripture 
came to my mind with a very vivid impression that 
I should without delay make him a visit. Under 
this impression I went to his house — and found 
him dying. I delivered to him the message I had 
brought from his Lord, and at his bedside offered 
a prayer which had its inspiration in that message 
of God to his suffering child. The message, the 
subject thereof, the time of its suggestion, and of 
its delivery — as it now seems to me there was lead- 
ing at every step. 

On another day in Nashville some colored Meth- 



Led by the Spirit. 327 

odists asked me to be present at the closing exer- 
cises of one of their colleges. They sent a car- 
riage for me, and I went, straining a point in doing 
so, as it was at a time when my bodily weakness 
was extreme. It was borne in upon me that, in- 
stead of attempting the usual sort of speech for 
such occasions, I should talk about faith as the 
condition of salvation for the souls of men. This 
took the place of everything else. I spoke under 
a solemn sense of the divine presence, as it seemed 
to me. In the plainest way I sought to interpret 
some New Testament teachings on that subject, 
and ended with the relation of my own personal 
experience concerning it. A full heart ran over 
with its message. On a front seat I noticed one 
of the students, a tall black man, who was one of 
the expected graduates in the law department. 
With an expression of intense eagerness on his 
face he leaned forward and listened until I reached 
the point where I defined faith to be choice, and 
described when and how I first proved this to be 
true by my own actual choice of Christ as I knelt 
a penilent at the altar of the church in a revival of 
the old times. At that point a new light spread 
over his face; he rose to his feet, and, ascending 
the platform, he grasped my hand warmly, and 
said: "Bishop Fitzgerald, your talk has made a 
channel by which I have found Jesus Christ as my 
Saviour. I have made the choice, and found ac- 
ceptance." 

It was as clear a conversion as I ever saw. The 
scene that followed was unlike what is usually ex- 
pected on such occasions. A noted visitor from 
the North looked on with evident wonder, while 
the colored preachers, who were there in force, 
sang of "the old-time religion" with that match- 
less melody that is in the voice when the soul is 



328 Sim set Viezvs. 

touched and led by the Lord. Led: it was what 
we all felt then and there. 

Many years ago I had it in my heart to write a 
treatise on the Christian life. In a circle of kindly 
friends my purpose so to do was bruited: several 
of these, having different shades of opinion there- 
on themselves, suggested to me that in the proposed 
treatise I should take the opportunity to give a defi- 
nition of holiness as it is taught in the New Testa- 
ment. I felt a natural desire to make such a deliv- 
erance, and to put it in such form and spirit as 
would make it a blessing to my readers. The de- 
liverance was made. It was in these words: " The 
Sun of Righteousness never sets: it shines for- 
ever; and on the soul turned toward it in faith its 
beams will fall forever. This is holiness. This is 
the new life that is new forever." Here and now 
I am led to say the same thing. 



JOHN M. DANIEL AND SOME OF HIS 
CONTEMPORARIES. 



JOHN M. DANIEL AND SOME OF HIS CON- 
TEMPORARIES. 



THE entrance of John M. Daniel into the 
editorial ranks was like turning an electric 
eel into a fish pond. In his Richmond tri- 
weekly Examiner what a shaking-up he 
gave to their dullness and dignity! When 
he wrote of the opposition he dipped his pen in 
aqua for tis. He could not always resist the temp- 
tation to put into the pillory a fellow-partisan who 
seemed disposed to make himself ridiculous. The 
average free white American citizen likes this sort 
of thing. Many a steady-going party man stole a 
furtive glance at the Examiner to see who was the 
last man that had been " blistered " in its columns. 
The paper was neither amiable nor dull. John C. 
Calhoun was its tutelar political saint. The reso- 
lutions of 1798-99 were regarded by it as the final 
expression of political wisdom. The echoes of 
Andrew Jackson were still in the air, and people 
were then naming many babies for that irascible 
and invincible warrior who was always ready for 
a scrap and whose name is still a spell to rouse 
the faithful. Party journalism was then in its 
blossoming time in this free-spoken land. " Old 
Father Ritchie " was at the head of the Richmond 
Enquirer^ wherein he expounded the doctrines of 
Thomas Jefferson, and warmly insisted that, as 
*' eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," a true 
disciple of State rights must vote early and at ev- 
ery election. George D. Prentice was making 
the Louisville Journal the vehicle for uncompli- 

(33O 



332 Sunset Views. 

mentary allusions to the political adversary and 
getting much enjoyment from the squirmings and 
bellowings of the baited bulls of the partisan arena. 
Now and then he dropped into verse, singing songs 
that still linger in some circles. Colonel Greene, 
of the Boston Post^ was putting into his para- 
graphs a spiciness that made the very victims of 
his satire enjoy it. Gales and Seaton were mak- 
ing the old Raleigh Register an arsenal for the 
storage of political ammunition, Daniel Webster 
and Henry Clay being the interpreters of the con- 
stitution whom they followed. William W. Holden 
expounded strict construction theories of govern- 
ment and passionately exhorted for State rights 
in the Raleigh Standard, making a record whicK 
was used afterwards by Zeb Vance in a way that 
caused him to feel that all was vanity. Charles 
Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, in the little but lively 
Milton Chronicle, was poking fun at the Demo- 
crats and in other ways tickling the borders of 
North Carolina and Virginia with an audacity that 
nothing halted and a good humor that was '' catch- 
ing" with all sorts of readers. George W. Ken- 
dall was making the New Orleans Picaytme as 
benign as a circuit rider and as bright as a coin of 
that denomination fresh from the mint. The 
Southern Literary Messenger, intensely patriotic 
and a little ponderous, was, through John R. 
Thompson, telling its readers what they ought to 
do just then in behalf of Southern literature. 
Young and enthusiastic, with the optimism of in- 
experience and high health, Robert H. Glass, 
through the Lynchburg Republican, was winning 
his spurs in the advocacy of the views that in the 
South became more and more pronounced as the 
cataclysrri drew nigher and still nigher until it got 
here in the sixties. 



John M. Daniel. 333 

Just at this time in the current periodicals would 
appear at short intervals something in prose or 
verse so unlike anything else that was coming out, 
so weird and so exquisite in the music of its peri- 
ods, that the writer, one Edgar Allan Poe, was 
charged with lunacy or genius by the inquisitive 
literary public. He was getting a hearing at least; 
his critics thought he w^ould bear watching and 
needed rigid censorship. It was inevitable that 
Daniel and Poe should meet; each had something 
to say and said it in his own way. They regarded 
each other at first with lawful curiosity, then with 
a sort of presentiment that they were to hold rela- 
tions of special friendliness toward each other and 
work together for the cause of liberty and letters 
in the South. They were a notable pair. I have 
described Poe elsewhere.* Daniel's features were 
as clear-cut as a cameo, his dark eyes lighting up 
his classic face, his thin lips compressed, after a 
fashion that revealed a man who could think and 
who loved to have his own w^ay. In the regular 
issues of his Examiner he badgered and buffeted 
the old Whig Congressman, John Minor Botts, in 
a way that was scarcely fair and yet was amusing 
to the average V^irginian of that day of oratorical 
ponderosity and voluminous printed disquisition 
from men who felt inclined toward statesmanship 
and office-holding. Such men w^ere not scarce in 
Virginia or other parts of the South at that time. 
Patriotism was never tongue-tied w^ith the descend- 
ants of Patrick Henry and his compatriots. In 
California in the early days if in any mining camp 
there was one local politician who could make a 
speech at short notice, that man w^as apt to be a 
Virginian or an Irishman. The traditions of Vir- 

*See Harrison's "Life and Letters of Poe," vol. i, p. 316. — Ed. 



334 



SiDiset Vi'ezvs. 



ginia and Ireland are friendly to that sort of thing 
from away back. One of Daniel's associates was 
a notabihty of the Patrick Henry clan — Patrick 
Henry A34ette, of King William County, a man 
giantlike in physical dimensions, who knew some 
law and much politics, who wrote for the Exam- 
iner^ who interested himself personally in Poe and 
Dan?el, and whose animal spirits and good temper 
never failed. I knew two others of this same Henry 
family who w^ere ahke noted for their gigantic 
size — Capt. Nat. Henry and 'Squire Spottswood 
Henry by name. The former was a cross between 
Lord Chesterfield and Dr. Samuel Johnson; he 
was ruffled and perfumed like the one, and had a 
vocabulary and magnificently rolling diction like 
the other. After running through with a large es- 
tate, he served his fellow-citizens in the Dan River 
valley as a schoolmaster. Blessings on his memor}' ! 
To hear him talk, and recite to him, was like tak- 
ing a postgraduate course in the urbanities. His 
manners bore the genuine colonial stamp, and he 
had at some former period of his life absorbed a 
whole library of information suited to a country 
gentleman who had leisure and means. The other 
brother, 'Squire Spottsw^ood Henr}^ w^as almost as 
fluent in speech and massive in dimensions. 

Those boys of the old days who were reared in 
the countr}^ who learned to ride on horseback 
earlier than they could remember, and could 
handle a fishing-pole and '* tote " a gun before 
they could cipher as far as the single rule of three, 
were big all over and strong all through. Longev-- 
ity was the rule with them. Specialists in medical 
science had not invented so many diseases and 
their remedies at that time, and indoor athletics 
had not been so generally adopted as a substitute 
for the open air. 



John M. Daniel. 335 

Daniel invented special epithets to describe the 
" Bison," as he called Botts, the loud-voiced and 
free-thinking patriot above alluded to, and man- 
aged to make all references to him more pictur- 
esque than favorable. The Richmond ri7//> was 
at that time the brilliant metropolitan organ of a 
minority party, except that from time to time a 
wave of reform, so-called, would sweep over the 
commonwealth, astonishing both parties by a re- 
versal of majorities, burying old party leaders and 
bringing new men to the front. The Whig was 
edited by John Hampden Pleasants, aparagrapher 
like Henry Watterson, who could run into a two- 
column disquisition concerning any man or ques- 
tion he cared for on the shortest notice. Clay and 
Webster still so dominated their party that the or- 
thodoxy of the paper was measured by its agree- 
ment w^ith the policies they stood for. Whenever 
a hostile head appeared, the Examiner was ready 
to hit it. The Young South, of which it was the 
champion, was combative and alert, not lacking in 
self-confidence, believing that it had found the so- 
lution of all political difficulties in the democracy 
that guarded minority rights with special courage 
and vigilance on the one hand and held fast to 
hereditary compromises on the other. Poe was 
drawn into affiliation wdth this element, and made 
the Examiner the channel of communication with 
the South just as it was awakening to literary con- 
sciousness and getting a glimpse of its possibilities 
in letters and statecraft all its owm. Had Poe 
lived, who knows what might have been done by 
him in this field? 

Blossomin<j time for the editorial fraternitv in 
this part of our country is the phrase I have used, 
and it seems to me to be well chosen. Dr. Leroy 
M. Lee was makincf a militant orcran of the Rich- 



33^ Sunset Views. 

mond Christiafi Advocate. He was a contro- 
versialist who used good English and believed in 
experimental religion as taught by the fathers of 
Methodism. In the Christian Advocate and Jour- 
nal the elder Dr. Bond was demonstrating^ that or- 
thodoxy was not a synon3'm for dullness, rallying 
the faithful and routing the enemy in his weekly 
issues. Dr. J. B. Jeter, in the Religioits Herald^ 
a big man w^ho knew books and had a good opin- 
ion of the world he lived in, w^as giving the Bap- 
tists an organ that had breadth and depth and did 
not lack denominational zeal. INIcTyeire, Deems, 
Wightman, Doggett, Keener, Capers, Gillespie, 
Myers, and Parker were coming on, the blossom- 
ing of their genius showing itself already in the 
journalism of the Church and elsewhere. What 
these men wrote runs through the literature of 
their Church like veins of gold through ledges of 
quartz. I do not know that Dr. John E. Edw^ards 
ever edited anything, but I do know that this mar- 
velous declaimer w^as not averse to seeing his views 
in print over his own signature. A marvelous de- 
claimer he w^as ! '* There are in these United 
States of America two great declaimers, Rufus 
Choate and John E. Edwards — and the greater of 
the twain is the preacher" — so said a well-known 
politician from the North after hearing Edwards 
in the pulpit. Here was a pulpit eagle that soared 
and shined of a truth. The sympathetic reader 
will understand how it is that Edwards's name ap- 
pears among those of these editors: he belonged 
to their period, and was a man of genius, a North 
Carolinian who was never spoiled by popularity 
and who never lost the glow that he caught as a 
boy converted to God in the Rockingham hills. 
The English Bible gave him his style, and the 
Holy Spirit gave him the touch of power. 



SUNSET VIEWS FROM MY BEDROOM 
WINDOW. 

22 



SUNSET VIEWS FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW. 

THE sunset view from my bedroom window 
shows me a world that excites at once my 
wonder and pity and calls to mind the 
heaven of infinite blessedness revealed to 
my faith. Compassion for the world in 
its sorrow and pain is awakened whenever my 
gaze is turned in that direction. A mighty joy 
comes down into my soul whenever my sunset 
view takes in the promise and the hope of the 
heaven revealed to my understanding by the Word 
of God and certified to my glad heart by the Holy 
Spirit. The pity that weeps over the sorrows of 
earth, the rapture that is felt in anticipation of 
what heaven discloses to my sunset view — these 
are emotions that mingle in my soul as I look out 
of my window. Looking forth upon the world as 
it is, I feel that I might be glad to recover some 
part of the strength that was mine at an earlier 
day and help to lift some of its burden of sorrow. 
I look upward to the sky that bends above these 
Tennessee hills and feel a mighty drawing toward 
its blessed m3^steries. Those mysteries: they lie 
so close to us here, and yet are so fascinating to 
us because of this very fact that they are myste- 
ries. We were thus endowed at the start; our 
nature is whetted in its capacity and passion for 
the progress which will be a factor in our felicity 
forever. 

Looking out of my window southerly the mod- 
est spire of the Blakemore Chapel comes to view; 
here the people called Methodists meet and wor- 

(339) 



340 Sunset Viezvs. 

ship and work to help one another on to glory and 
to God. As I look with good wishes in my heart, 
from the Vanderbilt University campus just behind 
me rings a bell which betokens something special 
for that company of persons who study and teach, 
who believe in God as creator and at the same 
time believe in him as their Father in heaven. 
Methodism was born in a university. The genu- 
ine type of Methodism goes everywhere. Its best 
type illustrates the well-attested truth that genuine 
scholarship has an affinit}^ with true rehgion. Ig- 
norance is the mother, not of devotion, but of the 
credulity which invites deception on the one hand, 
and of the bigotry which prompts persecution on 
the other. The Methodism presented to my sunset 
view awakens fresh gratitude for what it has done 
in the past and evokes a prayer warm from my in- 
most soul that it may be true to itself and to God 
for all time to come. 

My sunset view rests at times upon the new 
Roman Catholic school edifice that crowns the 
highest point of the hill that rises southward. That 
site might w^ell have been foreordained for some 
public institution. Our Roman Catholic friends 
are not the ox\\y people that have a w^ay of w^ork- 
ing strenuously for the fulfillment of divine prom- 
ises as interpreted by themselves. They see no 
need that faith and works shall be divorced. A 
defective interpretation at this point has made the 
trouble for all concerned. The attempt to make 
a worldly kingdom of the Church was against 
Christ's express command. " My kingdom,'' he 
said, 'Ms not of this world." In proportion as 
you put the w^orld into the Church, just in the 
same proportion do you dim the Church's glory 
and diminish its power. Europe is unlearning its 
errors, and retracing its steps in this connection. 



Sioisct l^iczvs from M\ Bedroom Windozv. 341 

In our New World here in America we hope to 
escape the mistakes made over there, and to keep 
the peace while we shun the wrong. Our Lord 
Jesus Christ tells us that his followers should all 
be one even as he and his Father are one. (See 
John xvii. 21.) That saying covers this whole 
question. That which he has promised he will 
surely bring to pass. So we will put our trust in 
him, and be patient. We will live and let live. 
The trend of our times is toward that toleration 
which is the basis of that unity which will be gen- 
uine and lasting. Thus nearly all of us feel in 
these United States. The exceptions are fewer 
from year to year: the dissenters grow less and 
less formidable. At this point comes in my short 
creed: ''I love everybody in the world — some 
more than others." Most of my readers will 
agree to this. Let us all who so profess make 
sure that we give each clause of this creed its full 
weight in the application of it. The sunset view 
from my bedroom takes in its sweep a unified 
Christianity. 

Looking out of my window, the charred and 
blackened walls of Roger Williams University, 
lately destroyed by fire, meet my gaze. Roger 
Williams University, my readers know, is the 
school for our colored neighbors. Blessings on 
these black believers ! They are not yet out of 
the wilderness. None of us are out of the wil- 
derness in the fullest sense of the word. But 
the Promised Land awaits us all if we do not 
willfully turn backward. God knew what he was 
doing when he allowed the negro problem to be 
transferred from Africa to America. He knew 
these Southern people, with whom the negro's 
lot w^as specially cast. He knew that, with 
all their faults, these Southerners had their full 



342 Sunset Views. 

share of the magnanimity and patience required 
for the transition stages of advancement for a race 
that was belated in the start. I feel like prophe- 
sying, not smooth things but great things. Some 
follies have already been exploded ; some persons 
are wiser than they were in the North and the 
South, in the East and the West. The old land- 
marks abide. \The golden rule, lifted up in these 
troubled waters, sheds its light in the midst of the 
\ \^arkness. There is more common sense in the 
\ interpretation of this rule, and not less of the spirit 
I of the Christ who came to seek and to save us all. 
The negro question will be settled finally in a way 
that will be pleasing to God, who is the God of all 
the families of the earth. While this is being 
done, the work of doing it will be educative to the 
white people of the United States, who, with all 
their acquirements, have yet much to learn. Cyn- 
icism and misanthropy on the one hand, and fanat- 
icism in all its phases, will be equally at a discount. 
Patriotism with a good heart — religion with good 
sense — will work together for us all. The best is 
yet to come for us all. 

The sunset view of the landscape from my bed- 
room window never tires. It has a charm all its 
own for every day in the year, and a special charm 
for each of the four seasons. This view begins 
N in beauty and ends in glory. Sloping up from 
the valley are the nearer hills, varying in their out- 
lines and covered with oak, hickory, poplar, and 
all the varied growth of the Tennessee woods. 
Beyond and above these rise the two bluish peaks 
that never lose their charm for me. They speak 
to me in the language of Nature, and I listen with 
a satisfaction that is never lost. Above these hills 
is the sky — the heavens that declare the glory of 
God, the firmament that shows his handiwork. 



Sioisei Viczvs from My Bedroom Windozv. 343 

The glory of God is the supreme glor}'. Atheism 
is the crowning absurdity. It seems to be an 
idiocy in tlie presence of these sunset views. 
*' The fool says in his heart, There is no God." 
As I trace these last lines the words of Asaph, the 
psalmist, sing to my heart a song of joy: "My 
flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength 
of my heart, and my portion forever." 



A FRESH INTERPRETATION. 



A FRESH INTERPRETATION. 

THE significance of the concluding clause 
of this twenty-first verse of this twenty- 
fifth chapter of Matthew was illustrated in 
the last sickness of Bishop TIargrove, which 
was so long protracted and so pathetic from 
the fact of its absolute incurability from the start. 
I had the privilege of visiting him from time to 
time during all these long months of affliction, 
durincr which he was watched over with unremit- 
ting vigilance and tenderly ministered unto by the 
faithful wife who gave herself to this holy office as 
only a woman can, self-forgetting, never tiring. 
In my interviews with him, the rule was that I got 
a blessing, whether I left a blessing with him or 
not. The testimony he gave in these interviews 
might be expressed in the very words of the 
psalmist: ''My flesh and my heart faileth: but 
God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
forever." He knew in whom he had believed; 
his foundation stood sure; his consolation was 
strong. On the occasion of one of these visits, 
after we had prayed together, he said, " I have no 
pain of body, nor worry of mind;" and his face 
was as serene as a cloudless morning on the Ten- 
nessee hills. So it was always when he was able 
to join in the prayer. On one occasion I was too 
weak to give him the message I had brought for 
him, and he was too weak to receive it. But we 

(3-17) 



348 Sunset Views. 

inclined our heads in the attitude of prayer and in 
the spirit of submission. When we parted that 
day his face showed what my own heart felt — 
namely, that we had received a fresh interpreta- 
tion, sweet and solemn, of the scriptural assurance 
that " the Spirit helpeth our infirmities." 



THE MASTER'S MESSAGE. 



THE MASTER'S MESSAGE. 



ONE day I visited a Christian friend who 
liad been a great sufferer from bodily 
affliction. Nervous depression v^'as a 
part of his trouble, and not the least dis- 
tressing. I carried him a message, not 
my own, but from my Lord. You may find it in 
John xiv. 6: "I am the way, the truth, and the 
life." After reading the precious passage, fa- 
miliar but as fresh as the dews of heaven, we 
knelt and united in a prayer of thanksgiving, tak- 
ing the words as the motto for our supplication. 
The prayer was something like this: "Blessed 
Lord, many years ago we placed our faith on thee 
as the way, the truth, and the life. We looked to 
thee as the way, and we have never been misled. 
We looked to thee as the truth, and we have never 
been deceived. We looked to thee as the life, and 
found peace and hope and a joy that w^as unspeak- 
able. We would now with thankful hearts renew 
this vow of consecration. We would exercise 
now that faith which is the choice of our hearts. 
Without any reservation, without any trouble of 
heart because of mysteries we cannot fathom, 
without an}' shadow of doubt or discouragement 
because of the sorrow and pain that may have 
fallen to our lot — we would take thee, blessed 
Christ, as the way, the truth, and the life." 

We rose from our knees and the face of my suf- 
fering friend and brother reflected the joy that 
filled my own soul. With the Master's 
came to us the Master's blessing. 

(350 



HEREDITY. 

=3 



HEREDin. 



EVERY natural law works for the man who 
does the best he can where he is and as he 
is. " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
and the children's teeth are set on edge. 
As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not 
have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. 
. . . The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek. 
xviii. 2-4. ) Every man will stand or fall according 
to his own choice, and the responsibility of each 
one is measured by his opportunity. That is a 
ray of Old Testament light in a dark place. 

We have a word from St. Paul (Rom. viii. 28) 
which outweighs all the '* ifs " and guesses of 
doubt and unbelief in this our day: "We know 
that all things work together for good to them that 
love God." In *'all things" we may include 
heredity. This word illuminates the whole heav- 
ens to the eye of faith. 

(355) 



"THE GOAL" 



"THE GOAL." 

UNDER this head many years ago I wrote 
a brief closing chapter to my little treatise 
on "Christian Growth." For reasons 
that will be understood by at least some 
of my readers I insert here the closing 
paragraph : 

"I was profoundly interested in this question 
[that of entire sanctitication] about twenty-five 
years ago. I was then the pastor of the Church 
at San Jose, Cal. One bright morning I was 
walking through the fields on my way to visit a 
3'oung Presbyterian friend who lay dying of con- 
sumption in 'The Willows,' a suburb about two 
miles from the city. The sky was cloudless and 
the air was balmy, the birds were singing in the 
sycamores overhead, and the sunshine lay bright 
and warm upon the beautiful valley. As I walked 
slowly on, m}^ soul was attuned to the repose, the 
harmony, and the sweetness of nature. I felt a 
mighty longing for that perfect peace of God, that 
rest of faith, which had so long engaged my thought 
and prayer. Lifting my eyes, I beheld the sun in 
the heavens shining with unclouded splendor. In- 
stantly the great truth flashed upon me. It w^as 
almost as if an audible voice, had said to me: 
' The Sun of Righteousness always shines, and 
upon the soul turned toward it in humble, trusting 
obedience it will shine forever.' My spirit was 
instantly flooded with a great joy, and I said to 
myself: ' This is what I so long have sought — the 

(359) 



360 Sunset Views. 

Sun of Righteousness shines forever.' Long, 
long years of toil and trial, of pain and sorrow, 
have passed since that hour, and the same light 
shines on the page as I write these last lines with 
a glowing heart." 

The foregoing was written in 1882. This is the 
year of our Lord 1905. To my own surprise, 
through the patience and mercy of God, I am still 
alive, with a mighty joy in my heart, and a hope 
that maketh not ashamed. This is the goal as I 
understand the meaning of Christian perfection, or 
sanctification, as some would call it. ** It is the 
perfection of a faith that does not waver, of a 
consecration that keeps nothing back, of a love 
that never grows cold, of a hope that is full of 
glory.' ' This is the normal type of the true Chris- 
tian life as I see it described in the Holy Scriptures 
that are able to make us wise unto salvation in all 
the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the 
words. Slightly paraphrased, this is the experi- 
ence I have realized. And this is the testimony 
of my heart as I now turn my sunset view to the 
hills of God that stretch on and on forever. 



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